After the Fall: Poems Old and New

Judgment at Nuremberg

Judgment at Nuremberg It was only when the cars were marooned in garages, everyone shivering because heating oil was unavailable, and crowds of the starving broke into food warehouses and markets, when inflation had wiped out savings and made pensions meaningless— jobs? forget it!— and with the country sunk into the deepest depression in its history that everyone finally woke up as if from a dream and saw the criminal clique they had put their trust in, that had destroyed their lives. Even the Christians who believed they had someone in the White House on their side finally knew it was just rich men, oilmen in particular, who had used their pentecostal ideas, cynically, to fill their own pockets. The government tried to rescue itself from the debacle by declaring a holy war, not only on Terrorism, but on the Muslim world. This was suicidal, like Hitler from the bunker. But the country was no longer listening. The military initially tried to take over by declaring a national emergency, but the soldiers weren’t being paid— they stayed only because they were being fed. Even national television for once refused to cooperate with Pentagon directives. People just wanted their country back. No way, with the crippling national debt— 28 even with inflation it was overwhelming. We owed the whole world for their money that had kept the fake prosperity going for so long. But now, who to believe? There were many who offered to lead us to recovery, but they were tarnished with their support of the disgraced administration and its disastrous wars in the Middle East. The Christian Right had its zombie army, and other militias sprang up around the country. It looked like the South was finally going to break away from the rest, as it was prevented doing in the Civil War. That’s when the country got behind the UN and the World Court, setting up a tribunal to try our leaders. Fantasy? They’re going on trial, just you wait. 29 ...