The German and the Zulu

Like the Valkyrie and the Harpy
One with spotted wing,
And the other with speckled;
Both with arcane religion deifying savagery;
Thor's hammer is like the Shaman's skull;
The totem and the fetish both rule there.
Metallurgy is not foreign to Africa;
Nor is the fetish foreign to Germany.
The baptized sword or the shrunken head.
The bone jewel or the tattoo.
Greece and Songhai stand nigh you
Barbarians. Yet, you do battle
Speaking your magical incantations
One toward one another.

Let Imitatio Christi bring you forth to a better world.

Both elicit a certain drunkenness.
Germans a false precision, and salubriousness.
Zulus a wild and unrestrained pride.

Yet, the Germans observed the Slave Morality---
And the Zulus enslaved their kindred.

A society wearing robes
Is always more kind
Than the one which is naked;
Yet, it is the nude which wrestle one another in the pits.
Though this is not literally true,
Let the metaphors I write speak.