“He had such beautiful, expressive eyes

within which stirred a profound sadness,

so much like his mother’s.

She was a kind and dear woman. I treated her

for breast cancer. You see, her death

left a mark on him, a black mark.

The US Army psychologists came to the house

as soon as I left Austria

and they interviewed me thoroughly.

They asked me if he was a bed wetter or a

eunuch – did he love his “mommy” too much,

or too little?

Did he ever come to me and say that he had

walked within rooms of deathly red,

built of stone and iron

where the shadows cried out – in his night terrors?

I told them he painted bright and insipid canvases

and sent them to me in Austria to hang on my parlor walls.

The biggest one showed a rolling landscape

and the sun breaking through clouds

to illuminate the ruins of some schloss

he probably drew for a postcard one

afternoon in Vienna after the war.

He sent a letter with it:

‘Dr. Bloch, my edeljude, my friend –

do not be alarmed! The world is ending soon

and the time will come when the order you

have known, the comfort you dwell in

will become clamorous and dire.

You see, something is off, something is wrong

I don’t know what, but we don’t have long.

The archers point their arrows into the sun

and the foundations of the Earth shake with

every one of my heartbeats.

I am sick but not in any way a physician can heal.

I am a broken clock chiming the same hour

over and over until the clapper of the bell

cracks and time itself ends.

History now calls out to me, it is sending

messengers running like Mercury

forcing into my hands missives made of nettles

written in ink that burns my fingers

and pools around my ankles;

the letters are from God

and He will punish me for my transgressions

how terrible it will be. How terrible!’

It then said,

With warmest affection,

-A. Hitler”