"OTHER'S BREAD"
How salt the savor is of others' bread.—Paradise, Canto XVII
I go by hedges where the thorns must tear,
For bud and blossom have been gathered there.
I say the words that I must say to hide
Rebellion's smoulder—to my eyes denied . . .
Denied.
Why must I forge the chains a heart forswears?
Why must I lift—endure, what no one shares?
Must pain live on through pulse, blood-beat and breath,
That torture still may learn new ways of death?
Have prison slaves, that work and sleep and rise
To whip—no nearer road to paradise?
Why must I barter, for my daily bread,
The things the dying yield but to the dead?
You think my words are mad—you cannot know
How insects make a wound, from which will flow
The foulest red. The dreaded eastern death
Was silence, and the ants and gnats—and breath . . .
And breath!
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