by Peter Pogany

Created on: March 14, 2009

Looking around in an old bookstore - hissing espresso machine, creaking spiral staircase, sweating pipes in the basement - we found a drawing; "Parisian Mob Scene - Late Summer 1792." Ah, this would make an excellent gift for a poet acquaintance of ours. "Before going to sleep," he once told an audience, "feast your eyes on a black and white picture of war torn Troy or a 16th century Moroccan fortress; colonial Williamsburg or the Halls of Montezuma, and you will be there, vagabonding across timescapes without luggage and jetlag."

Well, where else would an adventurous poetic soul like to go, if not to the stormy streets of Paris in those fateful times? We had the drawing framed and sent it to him as a token of our appreciation for the dedicated copy of his newly published anthology - "In the Mouth of the Shark."

The drawing was soon returned. The attached letter explained why.

"On the second night after putting your thoughtful gift on the wall, I wound up in a by-gone world where I once must have been. Some nightmares begin as dreams, but this one was terror from the start."

"I was being swept along by a noisy, flag-waving multitude."

"Get out of here without attracting attention! Go home, lock yourself in - I told myself. There must be something in your face and demeanor that will tell them: The blood of those who served the king gurgles in his veins!"

"Commands screeched from the coppery throats of distant military trumpets; then rifle fire. Frozen silence in one minute, beastly furor and fatalistic rage in the next. The scattered will of disorganized individuals coalesced into a single-minded, swelling and rolling deluge, incendiary and stone-hearted. They were looking for a victim, I sensed it. I knew it."

"An old man moving just a few feet away from me stopped, making the group around him, myself included, stop too. He took a penetrating look at me, his face a faithful mirror of a world derailed; banged his chest with both hands and nodded accusingly in my direction."

"A detachment of 19 National Guard soldiers saved me from mob justice. (I still wonder about the significance of the number). They took me to a very old prison; incredibly thick, slanted walls, rats scampering wherever I glanced."

"In the wee hours of the morning of my execution I dreamed in torpor."

"I was back in my ancestral chateau, celebrated for its splendid gardens and known throughout Europe for its glittering soirees. A long, richly laden dinner table glowed under the ardent luminosity of

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