The sun shines in the wide windows of Hitler’s cell at Landsberg.649 Boyish in lederhosen, he remembers that he was blinded by mustard gas below Ypres.650 He wrote a poem during the war, a poem out of a dream, before he took shrapnel in the thigh on the Somme, before Ypres: I often go on bitter nights651 To Wotan’s oak in the quiet glade With dark powers to weave a union— The runic letters the moon makes with its magic spell And all who are full of impudence during the day Are made small by the magic formula!
