To An Antique Coin 6 Poem by robert dickerson

and off his greasy palm
offered me you
there on the hill of that ruin
under a dim daymoon
in that yellow field
while swallows wheeled
and cried aloud
through the violet air of extreme afternoon
for, um, just a million lire or so.

Insane, insane
with criminal elan
looking this way and that
I smuggled you out
(a dixieland band
blared in my head)
to the land of the free
hidden like Ulysses in a pocketful of change-
the politzei suspected nothing strange.

Now on this leather blotter
a blackening souvenir
glittering and adding to the clutter
eloquently dumb
you sit at last
the present past
a survivor, a witness, an omen
a ten-band history of the Atrocities,
you swear
'Tremble, O man, the worst is yet to come'.