The Last Known Photo
I saw that last picture of you, standing outside
the infamous bunker. It was a blurry “chance” photo
that seemed right for the moment, like you
it seemed now pointless and old, a relic of defeat.
You looked over the wreckage brought
to Berlin by incoming troops, and even
in this blurry black and white photo the resignation,
the weary age of your body that now seemed
to wear the consequences of your rabid violence
in a similar way to Dorian Grey finally confronting
the consequences of his diffuse life, is blunt.
Soon you would be dead, inside the bunker,
by your own hand, with Eva lifeless at your side.
Soon all that you grasped would be gone.
Soon the people you had in turn entranced,
enslaved, and turned into a pseudo-religious
mob who would do anything for you,
by will or by force, would be free.
Free to face the consequences of their actions,
undertaken under the force of your once hypnotic,
chaotic, and monomanic persona.
Soon you would be gone and your assistants
in carnage would be hunted, sometimes for decades,
and brought to whatever poor justice
could be metred out for the horrors you left behind,
but you would gone, beyond our temporal justice.
We would say “Never Forget” and your name
would become a swear word, so often mindlessly uttered
that some fellow called Godwin would recognise a law in it.
We would say “Never Again” but soon enough,
across the world, others like you would arise,
similarly invisible until it’s too late,
because they say the same things in different ways,
and wear different clothes, do different things
to the same horrendous plan, because they make us think
they’re a joke, then entrance us, enslave us, and wreak havoc
while we are still too blind to see.
