AGAINST REPRISALS a well cut jacket of despair hangs from his shoulders I could put him in my sights and line him up with an empty horizon where not one light enters it could be a habitation or a door that opens the inner workings of starvation what is repeatedly done we call an unheard of horror we claim our reason is overcome in fevers and sores my heart beats out of time my enemy more than my lover is mine and I am lost in his degradation more than a blind man in a sea with one boat that makes no sound as it slips on the current away from thrashing hands skilled at many things far different from this water