German

He announces that the poem
he’ll be reading is a gift
from the ancient ones
unveiling the dangers of the coming
ultrafascism.
Then he begins in German
and if he could speak German
at anything more
than a freshman level
we might find
less menace to his voice.
Instead the elementary cadence
marches uninflected
over art into history.
We catch snips of words
and phrases, some in English:
holy war,
Taleban,
Allah,
Jehovah,
Freemasons,
KGB.
We shift in our seats,
startle when he reaches
under his shirt. Nothing
is forthcoming but no one
relaxes. His voice rises
to a near shout. He concludes
with English: “man cannot destroy
the earth, he is of the earth.” We
are not comforted, we who are in
this room full of smart people terrified by
a strange man reading a bad poem
in halting German. But when he is done
we applaud, looking around to see
who is applauding, who is not, who sees us
applauding.