Friedrich's Unwanted Legacy

The lion, once camel, became a child thus:
The coachman's whip descended
upon the wearied horse
like a brownshirt's truncheon.
Friedrich vaulted upon the fallen beast.
A blanket he became to the tormented,
crying, "Basta! Basta!"
as his friends removed him
from a carcass he could not save.

Silent, staring, dressed in white,
a color common of converts,
he watched aloof his sister's spell
as she weaved a caveat into a cult;
an iconoclast, an icon.

And now a history awake
still pines to shake
the lingering nightmare
of a still echoing Kristallnacht.