Thursday 9 November 2017

Innocence receives no justice:


They disembark, the next payment from Athens,
feel the sand and then the land
(at last after months at sea)
pitching beneath their feet,
the ankle chains lighter now
they know if they fall they will not sink.

How wrong they are
for sink they will despite
what they think as the follow the trail
down through the labyrinth… hope
a memory that fades (swift spring blossom)
as with each step
they move towards oblivion.

Each April they come,
(even then, hundreds of years before T.S
it was still
the cruellest of all the months)
payment for an error
like the sin (apparently) we all shoulder,
lumbering oxen, free will yoked to the ransom
a past places upon us —

and isn’t that the way of innocence,
doomed to forever bear the inconvenience
of past mistakes;

the way a child
huddles in the room at night
fearful of the footsteps
that echo into the past where other footsteps trod
down other hallways
to set patterns no child can escape —

the way a babe born deformed,
named a beast, is sent into the depths
to slay


the very innocents he mirrors.

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