For All These Verses I Have Paid A Price Poem by Emmanuel George Cefai

For all these verses I have paid a
price

that was not a pact with the Muse but I
calculated that a price be paid

and now that price is getting paid - and
how!

the song arises slow and funereal -
already!

already the blood flows the little blood
that remained to the last, it stains,
it calls, will call, for ever in
Justice.

But that be all.

Beyond, peering as through a needle, eyes
of a mysterious figure come

The end is here and the price is paid

Slow subsides the fugue, its job now done.