I have counted
Vigorous regrets -
Ten thousand and one,
Measured them
Mile for mile,
And anyone can see
They own me now.
My goodness
Was liquefied
When first I commenced
To commit carnage
In the name
Of a just cause.
Standing in the blood
Of a stranger’s child,
I lost faith in myself;
Consumed by the enormity
Of my actions.
Watching the energy fade
From my victims’ eyes,
I packed my heart in ice,
And embraced my atrocities.
Thus, the shame
By which I die
Ten thousand and one deaths.
Each riddle wants me,
Surrounds my emptiness,
As I wait for madness.
A very powerful description, almost the whole book 'Crime and Punishment' in a few stanzas. Slightly different situation though. I experienced most of the poem in a chillingly direct way. It's a very universal contemplation of-I think-the 'universal soldier', as one songwriter titled him (and now, her) , and some of the mental/emotional/spiritual effects that can follow upon 'following orders' or even exceeding them in some emotionally sick way. I have to sit with the ending. But you've given me one of the clearest distillations of such a process I've ever read.
Whoa! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
Quite Intense... and sad. So much loss.