Anselm Kiefer – Grits and Grains

a poem marking the 80th anniversary of the ending of World War 2

Match of the Day cameras
focus their lenses on
young boys and their disappointments
in the closing minutes
in the dashing of hope.
The fingers on their hands
go to the bone
of the sockets of eyes
to prevent their tears
staining their faces.

After the match, so we’ve heard,
men will go home
and pass on their beating.

There are no cameras
for those beaten in war.

They’re all parading victors
their celebrations
their talk of living for peace.

How does it feel to be
a beaten people?
What would history tell us
if written by losers?

The shame is in defeat,
in losing everything
they’ve ever fought for,
for being on the wrong side
for allowing themselves to be misled,
for still breathing
and surviving
and wondering forever
if they fought hard enough,
or if survival
was its own betrayal.

They need new warriors
to help them fight again.

Kiefer had it,
the imagination
for a nation
down on its knees.

Following Vincent,
he painted the sunflower,
now bent and grey,
head shaking
stem hollowed,
shame-faced,
shaken to its core,
spilling the seed
of its future
watering the bloody earth
for a different
golden dawn.

September 2nd 2025
©DavidHerbert

kiefer_hortus_conclusus.990x0

The sunflowers weep. Anselm Kiefer has done several paintings of sunflowers. He was born in 1945 in Germany, two months before the end of the war. It is hard to imagine the state of mind of the German nation at that time – on the edge of a shameful defeat, confronting the horrors of their totalitarian regime and, of course, the Holocaust. How does a society ever recover from sinking that abysmally low?

Anselm Kiefer has been determined to confront his culture’s dark past. Here, the sunflower weeps. The sunflower looks so different in Kiefer’s work to the glory of its portrayal by Van Gogh. In Kiefer’s work, the sunflower stands for the national shame. Once proud and tall, the sunflower hangs its head in shame and disgrace – and weeps.

We can see the tears falling – they are the sunflowers going to seed. The seed is watering the earth for a new cycle of life – for a better season.

I was hoping to use this picture in a sermon – (particularly appropriate for Holocaust Memorial Day). I asked myself, “is Kiefer a Christian?”. Then I thought, “what is the point of that question?”, and “what an ugly question to be asking”. In that question there is a “as opposed to what?” – as in “if he is not a Christian then what is he?”. It becomes “Is he a Christian – (as opposed to a Jew)?” See what I mean. It’s an ugly question, particularly on Holocaust Memorial Day.

Kiefer is an artist in the business of lament and hope. There are plenty of others – largely inspired by the Jewish artists and prophets of the Hebrew scriptures.

Tag: Anselm Kiefer

Match of the Day

Sunflowers weeping