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Poetry

I watched him fall and rise upon that hill,
heard his call as he released his ghost.
I never dreamed civility would damn me.
I was like others, a man of honor
with a wife who wanted peace of mind by nightfall,
children who needed discipline, routine.
I could not be a revolutionary,
abandon what had been vested in me.
Doubtless he understood. Why else obey
the common law, shoulder his own undoing
to the place of skulls, when but a word
would spare him? He chose my silence
as surely as he chose his betrayer.
He needed me to fail to save us all.

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The Image archive is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

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