Epitaph on a Tyrant

Epitaph on a Tyrant
By W. H. Auden

Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.


Who came to your mind when you read this poem?

Auden wrote the poem in 1939, so he may have had Stalin in mind. I’m not familiar with Auden’s politics, but I would bet most men of that generation would think of the communist dictator. Possibly Hitler, as World War II would have been well under way by the time the poem was published. He may have had some banana republic dictators in mind, though I’m not too well versed on the geopolitical situation in the 1930s and 40s to name names. Tyranny and tyrants, I suppose, is one sad facet of human existence that will never disappear.

Me, I immediately thought of Saddam Hussein, our time’s Tyrant Supreme. The second line recalls the “bestsellers” Saddam penned. The fifth makes me think of those photo ops you’d see of his staff of generals at his table, all sporting the same exact mustache the dictator wore. The poem captures precisely the brutality and dreadful power of such a monster like the one that ruled over the Iraqi people for thirty years.

This poem is so perfect it tempts me to not even try ...