Kevin Densley: ‘Dying Thoughts of Dr Josef Mengele’ and ‘Muscular Christianity                 ’

Dying Thoughts of Dr Josef Mengele, while Having a Stroke and Drowning off the Coast of Bertioga, São Paulo, Brazil, 7 February 1979

When you’re drowning,
the water
bubbles above you,
through the translucence
to the undulate surface.
Beyond is the sky,
azure today.
The sun is a disk
of hammered, hot gold.

My head’s in a vice.
My right side is numb.
I sink fast. I know
there is no way back.
I fade, yet I remember
those eyes,
the eyes
of terrified children.

But it was my work,
and I am not sorry.

Kevin Densley

Muscular Christianity                 

Looking at the Station of the Cross
in which Christ is stripped, I reflect
—he must have been working out.
But who was His personal trainer?

God the Father?

Kevin Densley