Even Pets

Nebraska read it with eggs and bacon
As did Churchill choking on his tea.

Do not trouble der Führer, little boys
Of Europe, America, and Pius XII.
Your women will be raped, your children
Worked like slaves. Der Führer has his ways.

Lawyers as well swayed from lampposts
Necktied in dress shirts gunmetal pressed,

Killed with the best of Czechoslovakia
At Horák’s farm to bury the name,
But for the birth from Lidice’s clay
Of bronze sculpted children too frightened to pray.

(In memoriam for the massacre on June 10, 1942)