Yesterday both of us were alive

Today I am living but you are dead.

The devil in his vilest mood under your own shed

Raised the rusty rod with his bristled hands

And brought it down with all his vulgar might

On your head held high at least once

In defiance to his relentless claim,

In refusal to be blackmailed any more

By those goons growing from strength to strength

For our cowardice and callousness

Or compromises for petty gains.

Didn’t you also turn a deaf ear or a blind eye

To the helpless cry of your neighbour

When it was his turn to suffer alone and die?

However much we may try

To give a lie to this

Can we deny the devil his due

Having patronized and pampered him so long

To defer our individual doom by a day or two

And estopping thereby our very right

Not to gratify his unnatural greed?

Or didn’t we consider it a piece of quixotry

To take a stand sometime somewhere and say,

‘Thus far and no further, come what may?’

Instead we chose the easiest way,

We joined the devil’s band,

We became his bannermen.

At your tether’s end

You decided otherwise

And took a stand;

With my seeming strength unlimited

I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t even sell my soul

To see the face which launched a thousand ships

And burnt the topless towers of Ilium.

I have mortgaged myself in perpetuity

Not for immortality from sweet Helen’s kiss

But for mere crumbs

And my bondage is a state as complete as death

Yet I am not dead

It is a kind of stupor, a nightmare.

I cannot raise my pralysed hand

To give you succour

And my anguished cry

Is muzzled into a whimper.

Yet your shattered skull and battered body

Should not make me cry,

For whosoever loseth his life shall save it

And afraid to lose it I made myself over

To the safe keeping of the devil

And bound to a wheel of fire

My existence I find

Hardly worth anything

For that perhaps I should cry.