WORLD FIXER:

Two very small eyes

appear to a very small child

in a pitch black night

and suddenly the child realizes

that the very small very kind eyes

are the lights of a locomotive

History digests all those people

The biggest monsters

the greatest atrocities

have already been digested by history

History has a good stomach

Voltaire I said

but they only gaped

When I say France

or Ireland

or Paraguay

they only gape

I can't stand strangers

They do everything wrong

nobody obeys

They don't hear anything

they don't see anything

but they incessantly demand

exorbitant payments

My tractate does not demand anything other 

than total abolition

but nobody has understood that

I want to abolish them

and they honour me for it.

from Thomas Bernhard, The World-Fixer