And the mood of shadow strikes
As the headsman’s blade falls upon the traitor to the king
Though the liege lord lacks authority
In tradition or in fact
To take the lives even of those deemed disloyal
But like the capricious whirlwind
That shatters one village and spares the next
Slashes regardless of intention act or explanation
No justice save the monarch’s will
For the hapless soldier disoriented in the fog
The guildsman in good faith to fulfill a contract
The wife who exercises the feminine lore of herb and textile
Neighbors who toil and till and heal
Consigned without warrant to dungeon and death
For satanic perfidy or foreign cabal
Spurious fantasies of a demented autocrat
Who punishes the poor for poverty
The migratory for migrating
And the thoughtful for thinking
And all suffer under his sway
So falls unbidden the mood of self-contempt
Dejection and residence in the city of Dis
And you can see the darkness visible coming
When the little dictator in the brain
Provincial governor
Pilate at his ablution
Like novel virus banishes all taste all pleasure all joy
And that compliant patient the accused
Remembers beauty
But cannot see it
Remembers sweet melody
But cannot hear it
Remembers the batter which nourishing mother bid them stir
But cannot taste it
And the little dictator possesses the mind merely
And the train of sincerely sympathetic friends and family
Baffled by this strange interloper
Ask what have you done with our friend
But where friends shall I put this fear of fucking up
Where shall I put this anger at the world at myself
Just don’t fuck up they helpfully reply
Just don’t get mad
And snap out of it the spell isn’t real
And they want to help more than they want to listen
Than they want to know what help might help
Meaning well as most are wont to do
Serve only to remind one of his wickedness
His incapacity
Morally torpid and an incompetent boob
Fully aware that every person he knows is human
That he himself is merely human
And subject to the limitations of every object every organism
Happy to accept the fallible humanity of all but himself
Who appreciates truth beauty and goodness everywhere
Except in himself
Arrogant in his exemption from the common run
Miraculously devoid of any extenuating virtue
Save perhaps that he is not the most vicious of criminals
But merely an inadequate mediocrity
And a pompous ass to boot
Vaunting his erudition in gratuitous display
Exposing thereby his ignorance infinite
Teasingly indulging in suicidal ideation
Who passively accedes to the sentence of death
Fit punishment he concedes
For the clumsy the wicked the ugly
Generous he supposes
To spare others the carnival grotesquery of his madness
The offense of his incapacity
Judge jury and executioner in one fell stroke
Denying himself alone the dignity of due process
And why do we torment ourselves with a cruelty
That we would impose upon no other being
Fie on punishment
Cursed be the curse of the ages
The debilitating wound of hierarchy
The tyranny of the vertical axis
Right comes from reasons not from command
And do you suppose your command
Will bring about right
Commands backed up by naked force and blind
By the threat of punishment
Thereby fostering the breed of sneak thieves
But people can understand reasons
Which come from facts
And people can act accordingly
Within the limits of their knowledge
And of their human self control
Can
For we experience those limits the livelong day
In our small and permeable selves
In our small and narrow provinces
In our small and finite universes
And we should esteem those who strive against the limits
Let us therefore forgive their wrongs
For they know not what they do
For they create not themselves in any case
And let us forebear to cast the first stone
We who have done and will do wrong again
Almost certainly in the suppositious future
Let us forbear to apply ugly epithets
As ass or boob with their puerile suggestiveness
Or yahoo even if amiably qualified
Let us experience the pathos of their vulnerabilities these humans
Their defects yea even unto their wrongdoing
Let us recall how endearing
Are the incapacities of those we love
As of pronunciation syntax or physical maneuver
Who shop at Walmark and dine at Chic a Fil
Who use fasteners of velcor in their condominimum
Let us appreciate the nobility of striving
In person beast alga tree
Let us tend to the weary and to the afflicted
Let us check the darkness
Let us love one another
And let us love ourselves as our neighbor