What must the king do now? Must he submit?
The King shall do it.
(Richard II, Act 3 Scene 3)

The featureless Kanzler on the TV set

surveys his not-quite-regal self about to be

cut down to size by voters at the ballot box.

That is the way it goes. He stoically thinks.

Bismarck he’s not. Führer (thank God) he’s not.

No leader, either alas. No Charles the Great; no

Otto, Kohl or Brandt. No Angela sent from heaven.

No Hermann triumphing in the forest over

Rome. He is he thinks defined now only by all

that he was not. He walks back backwards

into history. Kanzler he’s not. And yet,

surrounded always by that bloody secret-

service detail, man-in-the-street he’s not. Special

he’s not. Average he’s not. He thinks. His head spins

with the nonsense of it all. Power is being not.

He thinks. And all careers must end in a sharp fall,

like arrows dropped to earth short of the mark.

Yes. Es muss sein! A comforting thought at last.

He thinks. The shimmering ghosts of Weimar mill, waning

and semi-present, around. Warning in vain.

“As one party begins, so another one ends.”