The Fate of Hitler's Brain
by Rachel Swirsky
Researchers have revealed:
Hitler had syphilis. It rendered him insane.
Or maybe he suffered schizophrenia
induced by a cocktail of methamphetamines
which he popped every morning
along with his bratwurst.
Drugs or disease wormed into his synapses
and chewed humanity from his skull.
His evil secrets lie uncovered.
There's no point in further study.
Let's tip his brain out of the jar
and dance in the flood of formaldehyde
until our lab shoes slide and squeak us
into trysts on the specimen tables.
In the morning, we'll stumble home
parched and hung over, but reassured
we are immune to evil, immutably good
nothing like Hitler at all.
At last we can forget
Stanley Milgram's unsettling study
where ordinary people inflicted agony
on a screaming, pleading man.
Finally, we can forget they needed only
a curtain to conceal their deeds
and a man in white to assure them
they were doing nothing wrong.