A Brief Commentary

By Haniel Neves

You fickle things!
Beings lost in the dust, corrupted by the soil which ought
To give life to so many.
Dastardly men! To think you can be another
And never leave a consequence. No darling fool
Ought to believe these ways, succumb, and preach.
Never leave this world to think you have gained it.
Never sigh and breathe fresh air, for the damned are more free
Than you as of now.
Dastardly women! To encourage such things, to abandon yourselves,
To lie, to witness scandal and lie about hoping for more.
No blackened boiling pot is deep enough for your deeds.

You people, you all, you mass;
No more thinking for yourself, no more linking chains.
Iron has more substance than you, and
More hope.
Blackened coal thrown into a fire is readier to be useful
Than anything you think you have done.
For you have done nothing! You have scourged this world
And yet bound it with nothing. Cut the flesh and nature,
No order which is yet natural is a match for you.
You ravage the souls of many,
And leave them like yours—
For you have no souls! Wretched kings and uncomely wives
Are no match for each other, and a blight to all.
Let “Justice come from injustice” and the trial of man
Play out in all courts. Let the people decide what is true and
Leave them the fate of many.
For chance and prejudice has its odds better to solve,
Than you could ever match.

No more usury! No more letting!
Throw down your axes and throw back the blood which has been shed.
But you cannot…
You cannot see your deeds, with jaundiced eyes and
Spoiled livers, you have infected so many,
And let disease become truth, forgetting what is true,
Letting detriment become good.
May no-one ever please you so much as yourselves, and no love
Ever satisfy you. For,
There is no rest for the wicked.
Drenched temples, blackened with blood, have more honor than you;
The sentences of a madman are more pleasing than you;
The cries of the hopeless, more favorable than you.
Forget yourselves! Let your schemes be known,
And suffer what is Justice.
Turn away from us, and give yourselves up.
It is no use being sordid, letting others shrivel up.