I Have Long Had This Premonition Of

But Fear And The Muse In Turn Guard The Place Where The Banished Poet Has Gone And The Night That Comes With Quickened Pace Is Ignorant Of Dawn.

This Cruel Age Has Deflected Me.

No, Not Under The Vault Of Another Sky, Not Under The Shelter Of Other Wings. I Was With My People Then, There Where My People Were Doomed To Be.

Mary Magdalene Beat Her Breasts And Sobbed, His Dear Disciple, Stone-faced, Stared. His Mother Stood Apart. No Other Looked Into Her Secret Eyes. Nobody Dared.

But Here, In The Murk Of Conflagration, Where Scarcely A Friend Is Left To Know We, The Survivors, Do Not Flinch From Anything, Not From A Single Blow. Surely The Reckoning Will Be Made After The Passing Of This Cloud. We Are The People Without Tears, Straighter Than You ... More Proud.