Henry Kissinger Has Left His Multi-Million-Dollar Apartment - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Henry Kissinger Has Left His Multi-Million-Dollar Apartment

 I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of "Admin." The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the offices of a thoroughly nasty business concern.

 

-C. S. Lewis, Preface to The Screwtape Letters

The bodyguards, the security details

The long black cars, the cooing movie stars

The expensive dinner jackets tailored just so

The best cigars, the rarest of champagnes

The jeweled watches and those golden cufflinks

The many underlings awaiting his call

The fawning bishops at the Al Smith dinners

The publishers eager to print his latest screeds

The voice that commanded armies and fleets

And left presidents quivering in fear

 

The millions of corpses rotting in the sun