A Visit

The doorbell rang, I jumped to see there stood three men in suits, and bulges (were they meant for me?) plus black and shiny boots. 'The President has sent us, Sir', the bigger bloke had said, 'First Lady likes to smile and purr when poetry is read, demands that on her special day you be there with your stuff, there will be food and drink and pay, I tell you off the cuff. The President requests you write some poems about war and how his overwhelming might goes out to foreign shore. And kills the rotten terrorists the enemy of man, and then compiles a lengthy list of others, in Iran. He'd like to hear that he is chief the one who throws the switch, so, be creative, never brief with your poetic Kitsch.' I saw the bulges and the boots but had to stand my ground, I told the men in Brooklyn suits that I was honour-bound to my own soul and no one else and I would thus decline. Next day my body, full of shells swam in the river Rhine.