by DOROTHY LEE RICHARDSON
I AM a murderer and so are you.
This sire is dead in me; that sire remains.
We let our fathers out of our own veins.
We resurrect in blood our fathers too.
Pirates revive whose victims walk the Curb,
A dead priest animate in an artist’s eye
Worships, and the whore that would not die
Contrives the risen reformer to disturb.
We all destroy; we all select our own
Perhaps eternal comrades. Our own will
Decides if cowardly fools or men well-grown
Go with us down the inevitable hill
When go we must, apparently alone,
Surrounded by the selves we did not kill.