wealthy teenagers danced to jazz
condemned as degenerate by the Nazis
and instead of the Horst Wessel song
they listened to Benny Goodman.
English style clothing they preferred to wear
and I watched them dancing without a care
in film footage now so long ago
taken in an underground club,
an hour for magic back in 1939.
But some of those beautiful youthful souls
were incarcerated in concentration camps,
the music died and the bleak sounds of war
then replaced the rich music of before.