Variations on a Line from Shakespeare's Fifty-Sixth Sonnet
Watched and well-known to the police, he walks
The Garden of the Oil Press. The great trees
Sweat in the mist, their moisture-swollen trunks
Fleshlike to touch. The cup
Of nausea for man being filled up
And emptied now, he goes
To wake eleven sleepers
Lest they lack sight to see Iscariot close
As lithely as a springe for garroting sparrows.
This is the man. This is the arch-traitor
To land bread progress family
Israel Rome and every other power
Whose action is stronger than a flower,
In time and just in time turning the minor
World we live on like some lost airliner
Back to the course direct, till every eye
Center by two crossed sticks stuck in a skull
Between a criminal and a criminal
The power
Whose action is no stronger than a flower.
—E.L. Mayo
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