Poem of the week: Kirchwey

AN ELECTRIC HORSE by Karl Kirchwey  

(about Eugenio Pacelli, later Pius XII, maybe the last of the centuries-long line of anti-Semitic Popes)

"The best-informed diplomatist in Berlin,"
a familiar figure at the ministries of the Reich,
he could converse on any subject in several languages.
He loved all animals except for flies,
and these he hated with a peculiar aversion.
He went walking in the Tiergarten one day,
tall and elegant in his purple cloak.
He told his housekeeper Sister Pasqualina
that a small boy had asked him if he were Almighty God.
(She did not record the Nuncio's reply.)
His friends once bought him an electric horse
which he installed in private and used to ride
wearing a hacking jacket and jodhpurs,
ascetic by nature and of the deepest piety.