like the thirty politicians who hanged
or gassed or shot themselves that April,

like a prisoner in Leopoldov undergoing
an appendectomy without anesthesia.

It was a beautiful anomaly — an algal bloom
masquerading as a full-skirted oak
the people mistook for pine.

Even as we transfer him from the gurney to a bed,
try two, three, six times to insert a catheter,
sweat under heating lamps, dress his wounds,
and wrap him in sterile blankets, we know
why he did it.