1
You whom I could not save,
can we make our peace?
There were so many of you.
And one body
after all
is very like another.
One life is like another,
in spite of
what you want to believe.
The dead in any language
are still the dead.
It’s clear that I was confused,
lost in the cool, deep grave of my skull
as the heat of the day
made corpses in the street
sit up and roll away from the sun.
Addled and jaded, peremptory,
determined to dissociate
your fate from my own—
that was my first test
and my first failing.
2
You whom I did not save,
can you forgive me?
Of course, if it were up to you,
I have convinced myself
you would have made
the same choice.
It occurs to me,
not for the first time,
that our days here
are spent entangled in fables,
making our excuses, one
after another—
that I have become
so proficient,
so adept,
at evading the truth
that I would pronounce myself blameless
for every death,
including my own.
3
You who would not be saved,
that army of one who bears my name,
I give you thanks
for ignoring the pleas of the others
and accepting
your own damnation
in exchange for what now passes for my life.
Ralph Culver is a past contributor to TheNewVerse.News. His most recent collection of poems is the chapbook So Be It (WolfGang Press, 2018). His new collection A Passible Man is forthcoming from MadHat Press. He lives in South Burlington, Vermont.