Responsibility Poem by Silas Weir Mitchell

'I, Moonkir, the angel, am come
To count of his good deeds the sum,
For this mortal death-stricken and dumb.'

'I, Nekkir, the clerk of ill-thought,
Am here to dispute what hath wrought
This breeder of song, come to naught.

'Let us call from the valleys of gloom,
From the day's death of sleep and the tomb,
The wretched he lured to their doom.'

Then, such as my song had made weep
Came parting the tent-folds of sleep,
Or rose from their earth-couches deep.
SPAKE A VOICE:
'I sat beside the cistern on the sand,
When this man's song did take me in its hand,
And hurled me, helpless, as a sling the stone
That knows not will nor pity of its own.
Within my heart was seed of murder sown,
So once I struck—yea, twice, when he did groan.'
SPAKE A VOICE:
'Ay, that was the song
Which I heard as I lay
'Gainst my camel's broad flanks,
Thinking how to repay
The death-debt so bitter with wrong.
I rose, as he sang, to rejoice
With a blessing of thanks;
For the song ruled my slack will and me,
Like one who doth lustily throw
The power of hand and of knee
To string up to purpose a bow.
Quick I stole through the dark, but delayed
To hear how, with every-day phrase,
Such as useth a child or a maid,
From praise of decision to praise
Of the quiet of evening he fell.
Thus a torrent grows still on the plain
To mirror how come through the grain
The women with jars to the well.
Swift I drew o'er the sands cool and gray,
With my knife in my teeth held to slay.
Hot and wet felt my hand as it crept—
Lo! dead 'neath my hand the man lay;
This other had struck where he slept.'

Then Moonkir, who treasures good deeds,
To mark how the total exceeds,
Said, 'He soweth or millet or weeds
Who casts forth a song in the night,
As a pigeon is flung for its flight;
He knoweth not where 't will alight.
Lo, Allah a wind doth command,
And the caravan dies in the sand,
And the good ship is sped to the land.'
SPAKE A VOICE:
'I lay among the idle on the grass,
And saw before me come and go, alas!
This evil rhymer. And he sang how God
Is but the cruel user of the rod,
And how the wine-cup better is than prayer:
Whereon I cursed, and counselled with despair,
And drank with him, and left my field untilled,
Whilst all my house with woe and want was filled.'
SPAKE A VOICE:
'And I that took no heed of things divine,
But ever loved to loiter with the wine,
Was straightway sobered. From the inn I went,
And in the folded stillness of my tent
Wrestled with Allah, till the morning fair
Beheld this scorner like the rest at prayer.'

Quoth I, this same Attar El Din,
Whose doubtful proportion of sin
These angels considered within:


'Ye weighers of darkness and light,
Ere cometh the day and the night,
Mark how, from the minaret's height,

The prayer-seed of Allah is strown:
In the heart of the man it is sown.
He tilleth, or letteth alone.

'Behold at even-time within my tent
I wailed in song because a death-shaft, sent
From Azrael's fateful bow, had laid in dust
My eldest-born; I sang because I must.
For hate, love, joy, or grief, like Allah's birds,
I have but song, and man's dull use of words
Fills not the thirsty cup of my desire
To hurt my brothers with the scorch of fire
That burns within. Yea, they must share my fate,
Love with me, hate, with me be desolate.
And so I drew my bowstring to the eye,
And shot my shafts, I cared not where or why,
If but the men indifferent, who lay
Beneath the palm-trees at the fall of day,
I could make see with me the dead boy's look
That swayed me as the bent reeds of the brook
Sway when the sudden torrent of the hills
From bank to bank the crumbling channel fills.

'Then one who heard me, and through stress of grief
Struggled with agony of loss in vain,
Into the desert fled, and made full brief
A clearance with the creditor called Pain,
And by a sword-thrust gave his heart relief.

'But one whose eyes were dry as summer sand
Wept as I sang, and said, 'I understand.'

'And one, who loved, did rightly comprehend,
Because I sang how, ever to life's end,
The death-fear sweetens love: and went his way
With deepened love to where the dark-eyed lay.'
SPAKE A VOICE:

'My father's foe, a dying man,
Thirst-stricken near the brookside lay;
Its prattle mocked him as it ran,
So near and yet so far away.
While the quick waters cooled my feet,
Hot from the long, day's desert heat,
I drank deep draughts, and deep delight
Of vengeance sated and complete,
Because the great breast heaved and groaned,
The red eyes yearned, the black lips moaned,
Because my foe should die ere night.
Then, as a rich man scatters alms,
This careless singer 'neath the palms,
With lapse, and laughter, and pauses long,
Merrily scattered the gold of song,
A babble of simple childish chants:
How they dig little wells with the small brown hand;
How they watch the caravan march of the ants,
And build tall mosques with the shifting sand,
And are mighty sheiks of a corner of land.

'Ah! the rush and the joy of the singing
Swept peace o'er my hate, and was sweet
As the freshness the waters were bringing
Was cool to my desert-baked feet.

'Thereon I raised mine enemy, and gave
The cold clear water of the wave;
And when he blessed me I did give again,
And had strange fear my bounty were but vain;
When, as I bent, he smote me through the breast.—
And that is all! Great Allah knows the rest.'

Said Nekkir, the clerk of man's wrong,
'Great Solomon's self might be long
In judging this mad son of song.'

Then I, who am Attar El Din,
Cried, 'Surely no two shall agree!
Thou mighty collector of sin,
Be advised: come with me to the Inn;
There are friends who shall witness for me—
Big-bellied, respectable, stanch,
One arm set a-crook on the haunch;
They will pour the red wine of advice,
And behold! ye shall know in a trice
How hopeless for wisdom to weigh
The song-words a poet may say.'

Cried Moonkir, the clerk of good thought,
'Ah, where shall decision be sought?
Let us quit this crazed maker of song,
A confuser of right and of wrong.'

'But first,' laughed I, Attar El Din,
'I am dry : leave my soul at the Inn.'