The Death of Saddam Hussein

The Death of Saddam Hussein

The death of Saddam Hussein
Was not a final encounter
With the Big Zero.
It was not the mandated death,
The state's dispassionate administration of the law,
The reduction of the target to a cipher.
This was carnival,
Crude circus,
Rough, riotous, up close and personal,
The onlookers geekish,
Jeering for the chicken's head
To be ripped off raw and bleeding from the neck.
He died,
Under the circumstances,
As well as anyone could.
A lynch mob's nigger,
But he had sufficient of the crowbar
To slang back undaunted.
"Is this how a man acts?"
That, I read, was his question.
Of the mob, the answer is no.
Of the man who died,
A yes.
He found
In the defeat that he so richly deserved
A final victory of sorts,
I think,
A victory
Which he also deserved.