DIE KRANKEN

peter longofono

“What is disagreeable and offends my modesty is that at bottom I am every name in history” —Nietzsche, trans. Kaufmann

From Prussia cancers

crow, wrought

cataracts in billows.

A plague, our windmill.

Son, nations scope

shut. Shoot the horses,

kindle the shutters. Out

and further out! Leave

me, dirging bootblack.

Go thrum, have done,

brook none but this:

King Frederick was just

a cape about a Yule-tree.

His country is no more.

∘∘∘