Let's see what sticks (04?)

When it happens, when the time comes,
when it happens to me, when it is a visitation,
let it come naturally, let the visitation come without a shot,
let it be a velvet revolution, a peaceful acquiescence,
the whole army folding its field cap into its back pocket
and discharging all its back rounds into the sky
above a stubble-field or the no-man's land of a frontier,
and let the uniforms be moth-balled, those of the ancien regime,
their shoulder blades quaint and even stylish so that children
can wear them at costume parties years after the troubles
have died down, the gates to the palace unlocked,
the architects, once summarily dismissed now honored,
flowers on their tombstones, freshly cut ones from the florist,
and only because they knew the key code to the sanctum sanctorum
where the jefe may have only eaten cottage cheese with a peach
in his silken bathrobe and looked at his uncut toes on the Ottoman
or perhaps indulged his taste in gurrelieder or American musicals
or maybe watched moderately salacious videos in the screening room–
but aerate the hidden rooms, open the larder, lighten the place,
box up the magazines, bag them in plastic, keep the dog-ears
on the pages where the jefe kept them.