The Dark Birds Flew

Otto Gelsted was a young Danish communist who described seeing the German planes flying over his home during WW2.  He was a communist writer, and intellectual, who had to flee to Sweden after the Nazi’s marches on Denmark as he had spoken out against Hitler and the Nazi’s in local publications.

The symbolism of the dark birds creates the dark foreboding of the coming war against fascism.

The dark birds flew
at dawn with engine noise
in squadrons over city roofs.
We saw and understood –
it went to our heart’s root –
we were to taste the bitter bread of slavery

A day so clear and blue!
The long-expected Sun
had come; but it shone like blind.
Overwhelmed, mute in pain
Denmark lay constrained
so deep in agony and distress as never seen before.

But in that hour of fear,
when you lay with a bloody mouth
and Death’s night and horror were around you,
We saw and understood –
it went to our heart’s root –
that as we do now, we’ve never so loved you!

By Otto Gelsted