Terza Rima Poem by Michael Maxwell Steer

I can no more bear the glint of the blade
than the whip- like suppleness of the serpent:
both open things too deep in my inner hatred.
Both are images of dark intent
not of death but mutilation:
an avenging fury for the time unspent.

What appals me is the nakedness of our position:
no matter how high, in an hour your fall may be complete.
The common enemy is hope, the common leveler gravitation.
Dulled, stumbling, we advance in a direction suggested only by our feet,
haunted by images of those who have faltered,
whose bodies we pass huddled in doorways, sleeping on the street.

Ive tried to believe, but nothing altered
the marvel or cruelty of man's ability to scheme his own undoing,
nor could the desperate fury of his dreams be in any way halted.
In the age of a tyrant there are no excuses for not knowing
what is done in our name, but who has considered for the cost
of the reaping that must follow such prodigal sowing?

The single mother gazes wearily at the rainswept concrete of her lost
opportunities and, fixing her headscarf, curses the men who forced her to decide
whether care for her children or mere survival mattered most.


9/7/1988