The Leader
by: Jeffrey Ferris
He sits alone
In a corner of the reception room
Of Heaven.
Alone always.
A small, seedy-looking man
Toothbrush moustache,
Brown uniform,
Jackboots,
Remembered salutes,
Memories of glory and shame.
Six million memories to ponder.
Waiting in the corner of the reception room,
Patiently,
Confidently,
For Christian forgiveness,
For his due.
For they turned him away
At the other place;
Lucifer feared him they say.
And now he waits
In a corner of God's reception room.
A small untidy man,
Brown uniform,
Black soul.
Things that might have been
by: Jorge Louis Borges
I think of the things that might have been, and weren’t.
The treatise on Saxon mythology that Bede never wrote.
The inconceivable work that Dante may have glimpsed,
As soon as he corrected the last verse of the Comedy.
History without the afternoon of the Cross and the afternoon of hemlock.
History without Helen’s face.
Man without the eyes that have granted us the moon.
In the three days of Gettysburg, the victory of the South.
The love we never shared.
The far-flung empire the Vikings declined to found.
The globe without the wheel or the rose.
John Donne’s judgment of Shakespeare.
The Unicorn’s other horn.
The fabulous Irish bird which exists in two places at once.
The child I never had.
I think of the things that might have been, and weren’t.
The treatise on Saxon mythology that Bede never wrote.
The inconceivable work that Dante may have glimpsed,
As soon as he corrected the last verse of the Comedy.
History without the afternoon of the Cross and the afternoon of hemlock.
History without Helen’s face.
Man without the eyes that have granted us the moon.
In the three days of Gettysburg, the victory of the South.
The love we never shared.
The far-flung empire the Vikings declined to found.
The globe without the wheel or the rose.
John Donne’s judgment of Shakespeare.
The Unicorn’s other horn.
The fabulous Irish bird which exists in two places at once.
The child I never had.
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