Farewell to Hans Kasten, a Friend

Like the far horizon stretched for the setting sun,
The legionnaire lay languishing bedrugged in bed,
A soldier of old fading, whose days were but done,
A grand, tired legend horizontally spread!
Oblivious, at times, to all presence in the room
He lay, a confirmed atheist cradled by God
(Who had long salved his soul in a silken cocoon)
Now, but in fond farewell to his withering sod;
Yet, as the bright celestial orb shining of light,
But fast in its routine perennial ends the morn,
And we, but dimly prepare for the light of night,
The other side brightens by the birthing of dawn;
And so too, will rise this slow, setting son of old,
His life ever impregnated with splendid deeds,
Leaving family, friends and memories untold --
With a Farewell, Adios, Aloha, Godspeed!


Berlin: Wednesday, 19August 2007


Note: Johann Carl Friedrich Kasten IV: a Hawaiian born American of established German parentage, religious rebel and a confirmed atheist, distinguished soldier of the Second World War, protector of Jewish comrades-in-arms, victim of excessive Nazi torture as a traitor bearing a German name, but fighting for the enemy, twice an escapee – latterly from Berga, finally sent to Belsen just before its liberation by the Allied Forces, a War Hero of the USA, patron of the arts, and eventually a much married, much travelled, wealthy businessman settled down in the Philippines for nearly sixty years. On 26th July 2007, I left him and his family in the Makati Medical Hospital in the condition, as described in the above poem. He passed away at home in the Pacific Plaza, Makati, on the 9th August 2007; his ninety-first birthday fell, along with his wife’s, Florinda, on 18th August 2007.