the fifties

The Fifties.

Sleet, snow, cold and dark before noon, Hitler
is living at a ranch in Argentina; that wasn’t fair,
only five years after the war, him snug, us cold.
And in travel books I read about Africa, white
men, in tropical hats, and naked natives, some
of them came to conquer, other to win souls for
a “Christian God.” No one asked the locals what
they thought; neither did I, they were black and
naked, for heavens sake! But they were not cold
in their Kraal, and if they were bitten, it was by
wild animals, not by icy wind. Big news, in our
dreary lives, Joseph Stalin died, mother said he
had rescued the working man, others said he was
a swine; whatever! I was still cold and it rained.