Two Murders - Part I

1. In those slow, dead hours that hang attendant Upon the birth of the dawn, When all things pure lie safe abed, Nested in sleep's safe oblivion, The rituals take place, unseen, unfelt In the woods or in the alleys In the dry, dusty corners of the old parts of town In any of the legion of lonesome fragments of our world So neat, so ordered - The rituals go on; The rituals of rage and fear go on Wherein the innocent are sacrificed To the furies that howl in derelict souls. When they had done with her, As she lay used, broken and spent - Their savagery hung briefly satisfied, But their need for power still surged within their veins Abating slowly in the cold air's caress And they thought then of the possible payment, Of the cost that might be exacted As the price of the evening's dark fun. The thought crept into them, And quietly whispered That she might someday return From the deep mist of pain she was floundering in, And rise with a strength they dared not imagine, To point them out to the daylit world, That world that would turn its eyes Away from the sight of what their leprous spirits had wrought And send them away To fester out their lives Snarling in cages with others of their kind In some barren fortress of stone and steel. The thought arose that there might after all be some God, That perhaps, just perhaps, there might be a chance That the hands of Justice, However stiffened by the cold of the distancing world, Had not yet retired, worn and crippled. These things they considered in their primitive way, So they chose what seemed the sensible course, And killed her. As she lay a still form in the black roadside grit One of them thought of the tire iron. He took it up, heavy in hand, and poised it High above her like some frozen snake, Then brought it down with a slicing whoosh That bit through the clear air Seeking to crush out the life in her soft yielding flesh As it lay quivering below the star-jewelled Winter blackness. Deep inside there went on the splintering of bone Blood spattered the roadside and ran pink into dew Pain bloomed riot in outraged nerves As it ran in soaring, tidal flows Through the infinite pathways towards her staggered brain Blaring a symphony of misery, Raising flaring monuments to agony. The small sounds she made and lost in the mist Soon settled to silence, As the last threads of her life came undone And the waves of pain ebbed away, More and more distant. She glimpsed that other far shore and, shipwrecked soul she was, Struck out for it - Passing beyond the last borders of our little thoughts Leaving the tragedy of her ending far behind Free at last, into whatever light there may be.