Electra longs for her lone ideal
	  Impatient with passion on her stoop,
	  Unarmed before the vicious troop,--
Cries from poor girl's woe for her weal.

Antigone, tender to her core,
	  Going round and round in grief
	  Mills herself but sad relief:
To kill the state with grief too pure.

What value vaunts from remorse, or worse?
	  Justice, with adamantine edge
	  Turns crystal from a shaken tear
Solidified from sighs, or worse.

In a breast gone god-abandoned
	  What good does grief reveal?
	  What idol does a tear revere?
I have not earned what rosaries condone.

Never another lie to 'get along,'
	  To manipulate the powerless,
	  To add confusion to their duress;
Never deception from the strong,

Never after venial convenience to strive
	  But all must be benign transparency
	  And facts alone the obduracy.
I resolve to struggle and to live

With difficult fact and effortful truth.

                                                        Next>>

Poems in pieces

by