C A PT A I N C 0 N·SC I E N C E
What was left in love when exhaustion
Of
kisses
had tasted the crime and cried
Our victim's name and you wept for him,
Was love left in love when her faithless
Pleasure fled and let our guilt come in?
Adulterous love, I loved the ogre instinct
Which forced us there captured and restrained
To make a private tragedy and bum like fiends
The body of believing honor we once adored,
Before the dark and sweaty bed encumbered us.
The heart, the plucked heart, the ripened one,
Did fall to the wicked teeth and lips of love,
And I kicked the fallen master and beat
his
head,
Captain conscience on the floor,
Crippled for all tomorrows.
But he would be victor yet, I knew, and yes,
For
his
own grim hatred forced the door,
And there he was, to see us strewn
In splendid dishevel, in lazy hiccup
Of love, satiated by sucked mouths.
And if I did not see him, what was it
That punished me, that marched on frightened faces
And rode in clamorous accuse all that night
And shook me with his steel, his knife, and his rule?
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