Every Way, I've Tried them All
Killed with ax and fist and knife and maul
Their bones I break, Their lives I take
How many souls burn in hell for my sake?
Care I not, for I enjoy to watch them rot,
Tasting pallid flesh without a seconds thought
The cold meat so tender and sweet
grisly deed, delicious treat

Look in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewest
Now is the time that face should form another,
Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,
Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.
For where is she so fair whose uneared womb
Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?
Or who is he so fond will be the tomb
Of his self-love to stop posterity?
Thou art thy mother’s glass, and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime;
So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,
Despite of wrinkles, this thy golden time.
    But if thou live remembered not to be,
    Die single, and thine image dies with thee.

Almost happy now, he looked at his estate.
An exile making watches glanced up as he passed,
And went on working; where a hospital was rising fast
A joiner touched his cap; an agent came to tell
Some of the trees he'd planted were progressing well.
The white alps glittered. It was summer. He was very great.

Far off in Paris, where his enemies
Whispered that he was wicked, in an upright chair
A blind old woman longed for death and letters. He would write
"Nothing is better than life." But was it? Yes, the fight
Against the false and the unfair
Was always worth it. So was gardening. Civilise.

Cajoling, scolding, screaming, cleverest of them all,
He'd had the other children in a holy war
Against the infamous grown-ups, and, like a child, been sly
And humble, when there was occasion for
The two-faced answer or the plain protective lie,
But, patient like a peasant, waited for their fall.

And never doubted, like D'Alembert, he would win:
Only Pascal was a great enemy, the rest
Were rats already poisoned; there was much, though, to be done,
And only himself to count upon.
Dear Diderot was dull but did his best;
Rousseau, he'd always known, would blubber and give in.

So, like a sentinel, he could not sleep. The night was full of wrong,
Earthquakes and executions. Soon he would be dead,
And still all over Europe stood the horrible nurses
Itching to boil their children. Only his verses
Perhaps could stop them: He must go on working: Overhead
The uncomplaining stars composed their lucid song.

If at first I had seen you as a still-life
Of passing interest, in one of those restaurants
With heightened pretensions of the eclectic: culture in a can
You would have remained void of deepness, to me:
A face half-hidden behind a menu, buzzing neon lights behind your head
Faintly visible enigmatic eyes, above the hors-d'oeuvres list
Some inaudible small talk with another person,
A casual tabloid easily forgotten.

If I had noticed you while you were working
You would have seemed another skilled contractor or employee;
The answer key to the solution I was seeking, though I might have paused
Long enough to suppose you wise, well educated: noble
In the struggle, perhaps wondered if you were always this serious
Even if not on someone's time-clock or your own pay roll
Maybe I would have thought you had a quizzical expression, or questioned
If I had imagined that wariness which seemed to hide behind an easy smile.

Instead, you've drawn me closer in, only toward you-
Pulled me in with no touch, not a glance, nor hushed voice
With only your words, your wit and keen intuition, against which  
I've no sort of defense, no sophisticated angle of attack
And words can promise all, or nothing; or simply imply a supposed future
Towards which we might have been running backwards
All this time, while caught up in thinking that eventually
We would be arriving at some place completely different.