Evil has no easy explanation.
Everyone is evil and is good.
Sometimes we watch ourselves do something evil
Frozen in a scream that's never
heard.
We cannot stop ourselves, so we go
on,
Knowing somewhere else the horror plays
And plays and plays until we are forgiven,
Healed by someone's gift of unearned love.
When someone has been tortured as a
child,
Evil, like a mad dog, crouches near.
One buries it deep in a vaulted, lead-lined chamber,
But zombie-like it stalks the world within.
It's strange that darkened children
need forgiveness
For evil that they suffer, innocent.
But guilt's the trademark of humiliation,
Burned into the flesh of memory.
Love washes over evil like an
ocean,
Sweeping over seething, fisted anger,
Drowning it in cold, unquiet depths,
Leaving you weak and weeping on the strand.
You wouldn't be yourself without
the pain
That twists inside like penitential dancers,
Making you the stage of some strange beauty,
Like no one else, the host of our redemption.
Copyright by Nicholas Gordon. Free for personal or non-commercial use.
Audio and Video Music: Elegy. By Wayne Jones. Music free to use at YouTube.