"Their tales are full of sorcerers and ogres / Because their lives are ... we live / By trading another's sorrow for our own; another's / Impossibilities, still unbelieved in, for our own " - Randall Jarrell, born on this day in 1914
I have worn the regal gmail apron,
The facebook tubal cain,
Signed the mysteries with my fingerings,
Bowed before the graven
Hidden in the currency.
Hidden in the currency.
So I look how the blood went from their hands
To their mouths now with contempt;
Instead of pride at the unalloyed
Victory of spirit,
I am horrified
At those in sweet sleep who will not wake up,
Who know not what they do,
Those who we called then the headless chattel,
Created
To be consumed.
The story of my pain begins in media res,
At the consequence I can't possibly
Remember, how it touches from its wire
Every fixture in the dead
And luminous globe.
There are heroes, yes, and battles, of course,
Journeys aplenty
To slake your constant and insatiable thirst
For darkness
Made visible,
But the plot's just to convince you of the lie
We've not been bloodied, all of us, from birth,
We've not been bloodied, all of us, from birth,
Held tight to the wound that binds us, this strange
Release, what we can't bear even to know
Must, for now, suffice.
It's the only atonement available
For what we have done:
Our forgiveness, which inevitably
Must come
As victim.
