Lovely angles, muscles, motion
roused the pitch of hot devotion.
Banners raised as standards flapped
orders barked, salutes were snapped:
volk emotion.

Olympiads and warrior rallies
Mountain maidens, Rhineland valleys
showed forth her visionary arts.
This Überfrau demands our hearts’
analyses.

Leni filmed it with a flair
made us feel that we were there;
over, under, moving through
a merely mortal flaw: her true
**** affair.

Misbegotten Roman signs
intensified her visual lines.
Cinematographic blame
forestalled by Leni’s optic frame;
her vision shines.

She’d tackle any reef and stall
to answer nature’s filmic call
diving deep and wrestling Kau:
light in Sudan’s darkness, how
it can enthrall.

Has history been unkind to her,
this cinematic Lucifer ?
Or is she vindicated
and rightly adulated
as memories blur?

No one dares excuse, nor coddle
propaganda’s super-model.
Yet, the audience must admit
Leni was no hypocrite,
ours to throttle.

Liebfraumilch-maid ? Much depends
upon the angle of her lens
Leni makes the cameras falter,
wondering if film can alter
history’s ends.