Looking At A Catalog For An Auction Of Hitler’s Paintings

He started young and early on he’d sold a few
to postcard shoppers or doctors
decorating their offices;
those impressed by neatness
and purity rendered without soul.

He kept painting right up
to the beginning of the war.
Small works — church walls,
ruins, architecture, cheap furniture,
humble homes and shops and such.

One curious fact: all those houses,
all those chimneys, and only now and then
a puff of smoke visible
in any scene, as if he was saving
his best renderings of it for his masterpiece.

Sometimes, the question’s raised:
would he, would the world have been different
had he had more talent or been more
validated as a genius or a true artist?  It doesn’t matter
if there’s an answer to that.  He painted

and failed at it,
then died in the dark
with critical bombs falling around him,
in the way that all monsters die;
most artists die that way as well.

We gawk at his work still.  We seek its provenance
and authenticity, preserve and hawk
its curious value, tell ourselves stories
about his lack of merit, how much a rankless
amateur he was — and yet, the works still sell.