Opinel №8
This poem appears in We Were Hateful People.
Can you determine when it all goes sour?
Uneasy shifts towards a kind of trance
Condition us: Deceptions by the hour,
Kaleidoscopic visions of a dance
Ostensibly dividing our devotion,
Lethargically discoloured ennui,
Deterministic fellow-feeling quotient…
We are but he and she, and she and he.
How easily is now the strongest feeling
Or passion rent in twain by our discord!
Requital is our mutual annealment;
Exoneration is our martial court.
Xenocrates perhaps does have a point:
One's silence never must one's pain anoint.