Chaplin

In his bowler hat, the wriggling of a child,
on his feet a pair of oversized shoes,
a thin mustache, the support of a bamboo cane,
in the narrow circle at the end of the film on a dirt road.
His bundle over his shoulder, he was bringing his wedding dowry
to twentieth-century cinema.

He bends to the ground, picks up the flag that fell from a truck,
we know it's red, even though the film is all in black and white.
He's there, unlucky in the face of the riot,
like humanity of the last century, turned inside
out in the cogwheel of a cogwheel era.
Yes, he had to bump into the corpulent,
the solemn in uniform, squeeze between their legs,
live in a shack and love Paulette Goddard.
He's the Quixote we didn't deserve.

He mocked the exterminator of his people,
managing to curse him with a smile.
No one in the twentieth century was so out of step.
Thus, from these years full of us, he is the one we will remember.