The Curator
A little person, colorless and tweedy,
removes his glasses, gives the panes a rub.
“I’m not,” he smiles, “a professor really,
more an enthusiast. I do this out of love”—
he gestures toward the taxidermy table,
where Cain stands frozen over crumpled Abel—
“love, you might say, of the humanities.
My work has always been to bring together
the greatest masters of the old techniques
and recognize their present-day successors.
The canon, yes. Colloquially, the bomb.
The art, though times are changing, marches on.
Stalin, Torquemada, Jack the Ripper,
Pol Pot, Rodrigo Borgia, Robespierre,
Leopold, Vladimir, Nero, Hitler,
and countless other prodigies are there,
downstairs and past the restrooms, in the hall
of specimens, where, mounted on the wall,
my trophies hang: the horns of Ashtaroth,
Beelzebub, and Morningstar. I know
you’ll be astounded—very few are not.
Well, as I say, I’m just a so-and-so
with arsenic and lots of time to kill.
But help me hold this little monster still,
will you? Quickly now—the hobnailed club.
As I say, I do this out of love.”