In The Mind Of Everyone Seeing Paris

In August 1944, when the Allies were nearing Paris, Hitler ordered General Dietrich von Choltitz, the military governor of Paris, to demolish the tower along with the rest of the city. Von Choltitz disobeyed the order.

from Eiffel Tower at Wikipedia

Even the Nazi military machine
rebelled and refused a command from Hitler,
didn’t implement a scorched earth policy
retreating from France where Himmler fantasized
about creating a state-within-a-state,
a homeland within the greater Fatherland
for his SS troops, for the Nazi ‘elite.’

Even the Nazi military machine
rebelled and refused a command from Hitler,
didn’t implement a scorched earth policy
retreating from France and the Eiffel Tower
still rises above the Paris cityscape
in tourist photographs, in artist paintings,
in the mind of everyone seeing Paris.

Even the Nazi military machine
rebelled and refused a command from Hitler,
didn’t implement a scorched earth policy
retreating from France but wreckage surrounds us
here in our state-within-a-state, seeing ruins,
walking through these ruins, upright like monuments
no one photographs, no one paints, of scorched earth.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .



Scorched Earth at Wikipedia


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