Josephine the Songstress

The overriding concern is unavoidable: do we have it in us that we tend our foster child as is required? But, in all actuality, in this particular instance we fulfill our responsibilities impeccably. I certainly could never do it alone, nor could anybody else do so as an individual, but what nobody is capable of doing alone we do manage-and most readily manage-to accomplish as a community. To be sure, the difference in power between the folk as a whole and their fledgling is so immense, it's already quite sufficient when we pull the tender thing within the warmth bestowed by our community, already this alone suffices and our fledgling is protected. Admittedly, nobody would dare to discuss such things with Josephine. "Phooey on your protection" she'd pipe up. "Yea, yea: whistle as you will"-that's what we'd think, but we'd never say it. And beyond all of this it's not truly a refutation when she acts so rebelliously, much rather this is simply what's natural and what one should expect from a child, this is the way that children demonstrate their thanks and, then too, it's in the nature of a father that he simply ignores the whole thing and goes his merry way. Now, there's a lot more in play here that's quite difficult to explain simply in hindsight to the relation sketched above, this relation between our folk and Josephine. Namely, Josephine is wont to take a position that is diametrically the opposite to this, she believes that it falls upon her and her alone, that she protects us, the community. The way that she sees it is that it's only through her songs that we are to be saved from all of the evil inherent in our political and economic reality, it's nothing short of this that under-lies her singing, and even if it should be true that these songs are incapable of driving away and dispelling all of our misfortune and misery {Unglück}, the sad lot of our destiny, well at least they will give us the strength so that we might bear them. Indeed, she doesn't say it quite like this, nor would she say anything else but this, point of fact, she hardly talks at all, she remains silent amongst the blathering bimbos; but still, this is the fire that blazes from out of her eyes, this is what lurks behind her tight-lipped glare; but amongst us there's hardly a soul who can hold his mouth shut and refrain from chattering, but she can do this, it's writ large on her features. By every piece of bad news, and on most days the bad news far outweighs the good, any number of horrible reports flow in upon us and each one of them overrunning the previous, and all of them borne along amongst an awesome amount of lies and half-truths, when suddenly she gets the urge to rise up to the occasion-though on most days all of this just weighs her down closer to the floorboards-but now she's pulled herself up and is extending her throat out, she's trying to get an encompassing view over her flock just as if she were a shepherdess overseeing her sheep before an approaching storm.