Abbreviated lions, on their sides long hours, dreaming of a passing, rusty birdcage or severe fathers and screaming schoolmates. Did Hitler sleep well in clean sheets, white as the Russian winter, pulled taut by anxious, loving maids long since scuttled away? On D-Day he slept till noon and Panzer tanks that needed his personal orders sat still. To live is to see a slowly assembling ghost town of the mind: all you can’t have back. Perhaps Hitler’s younger brother, dead of measles morphed from resting boy to hill as Hitler ran up, in his dreams, endlessly. But what poor little damn fool can only look outward, seek to reshape the landscape? Maybe dictators dreamed of the dinosaurs near enough to a sudden, key event: turning to look at a coming, eclipsing cloud of scalding steam and debris. Not understanding, but certainly, it’s the natural thing to do, to turn and look. In my dream I’m deep in a chair with a book and a tall man approaches with a gun. I say one word: wait. And he doesn’t. Good night.
Dictators at Night
The Poems