Monday Poem

"Hitler remained a serious reader all his life, spending much of his disposable income
on books during the 1920s and regularly passing quiet evenings in his library during
the 1930s and '40s, no matter how dreadful the orders he'd been giving during the day."
                           --Michael Dirda’s review of “Hitler’s Private Library” by Timothy W. Ryback

Bibliophile

Jim Culleny

They say Hitler housed 16,000 books
in Berlin and Obersalzburg—
his dark jewels.

High over Berchtesgaden  and in Berlin
his books did nothing for his soul
but drag it through the muck of his mind
so that in the end he became as much a victim
of his own immurement as Fortunato
did of Montresor in Amontillado

Predisposed, he heaped word upon word
building an edifice to suit himself.
Disinclined to relate, with everything he read
he greased his skids of hate.

He owned the Racial Typology of the German People,
the works of anti-Semite Julius Lehmann,
and any pamphlet that arrived at pre-conclusions
 —which proves:

a bookworm’s library may be vast
and worms may be well-read  
but still be worms at last