Sentencing
Four years ago
I sentenced a man
to his death.
Not that I killed him, I should revise,
but that I found him guilty,
of breaking and entering,
of rape,
of kidnapping in the 2nd degree.
There was little question
of innocence:
three friends, pointing plead fingers;
a DNA match, to the site of the crime;
the testimony, even, of a small,
and dimmer, woman,
who did not
flinch—
She had been chosen, she said;
among others. Kept
in a bathroom, with her face pressed down
near the floor.
she was beaten, and made to suffer
the seemingly
unsufferable.
One by one of us declared it: guilty
of breaking and entering,
of rape,
of kidnapping in the 2nd degree.
This was followed
by the order of a judge,
who unshouldered our weight,
who gave our words
meaning:
60 years, he said;
and Life.
But what I remember most, what I
cannot shake from my head
of that day,
is not a boy, just
seventeen, whose life was then
forfeit;
is not a brown-skinned woman,
shoulders so far down,
taking the loneliest seat
in a courtroom;
is not the mothers, of the chained
and the unchained,
who wept alike
over the choices which had brought them
together;
it is a matching of eyes
between men: the
defendant; his friend, six months
on the inside.
The friend looked at
Him—twice—
as if to say:
“Run, oh Beautiful;
there is no waiting
for Death.”
You may say this
is not my tragedy;
and if you do, you are,
of course, right.
It is theirs,
and so sharp,
and so public.
Yet, still:
the combined humours of pity, guilt,
love weave seamlessly,
before they are contorted,
in rhythmed bows,
and made
a spectacle
of other horror.
And, in that,
a
point goes missing.
No love here is
replaceable, and no pity
yet bane.
KMC 9/14/12
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