Admit the new soul from the tethered boat
Where sorrows fly like seabirds seeking bread.
Men are remembered by the words they wrote.
These, not the printless waters, nurse their dread.
“Is it not true, the dead forget their pains?
The pains of others, then, outlast our own.
Too much is gone, too little now remains.
Weep, and efface the writing on the stone.”
In crafts of evil who compares with man?
How many in the death-cells learnt his ways.
What victims could not overcome, I can.
Speak low, for where you walk, another prays.
“I saw too much, and did not wish to live.
My pity ran too deep for time to kill.
Read in my eyes their sorrow, and forgive
Those others who obeyed a tyrant’s will.”
Death cannot heal the dead of all their pains.
Life is a tree that blossoms in the stone.
Its root is sacred; every hour it gains
Until at last it masters all that’s known.
“Stern judge, you understand us more than I.
Mercy there was, and kindness, in the stream.
I prayed for death, and still I could not die.
My dream still holds me. Wake me from my dream.”
Cast off the tethered boat, while overhead
The starving seabirds cry and veer away.
He is of those whose fingers crushed the bread,
And who can perish, born on Judgment Day?
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