Three images flash on the screen:
Pasteur, busy with test tubes;
Hitler, right arm raised,
addressing a rally of brown-shirted men;
a white horse running through fields.
Then a fourth: a boy reading,
because this is National Library Week.
The boy has beautiful eyes.
They shine as he reads and listens
to the soundtrack in his head:
glass clanking, a roar from a crowd,
an exuberant whinny. I want
to knock on the screen and tell him
one of the three is not romance
and not yet history. I was there
when that one happened and I’m still alive.
The boy’s eyes shine impartially.
Tonight he may dream of a cowboy
whose face looks like Pasteur’s,
wearing a swastika on his shirt
and riding a snow-white horse
through undulating grasses
into a blood-red sunset.