No voice was ever raised,
(least not recollected),
But the quiet stung just as loud;
The shaming , a manteled yoke worn
’til the peccant horns were shorn.
Yet their stub, tho’ shrubbed, fallowed;
The remittance of unspent sins,
To be called to compense
at some future whence,
Where the pent ‘strations might
be wholly spent.
Then, fully shot, all the gones having went,
The balance weighed, the dross assayed
And push come to shove —
A tender heart broken on the rack of love.
poetastrophy 