*****

Recorded Reading (4:08): https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/s5p88k37eeeukzp3sh16b/Keep-Turning.mp3?rlkey=g0w5jmio7ylodw0v0hnmb92w8&dl=0

*****

Keep Turning

We know that our tormentors suffer more
Than we their victims — suffer three times more —
The first as they themselves are shown
How even an adult full grown
Can act as if no more than three or four

Or then, classmates so cruel been
To turned them bitter, turn them mean ~
Or even sadder, born without
Capacity to feel about
Whatever suffering they may have seen

Sympathy, pity or remorse
No matter how attempt to force
Emotions others find acceptable
A lack appallingly regrettable
Since most take such as but matter of course

They wonder all existence long
What it is they’re getting wrong
Experiencing no part of
That so sublime emotion, love
Which they hear lauded both in verse and song;

The second, in the lack of peace
The absence of genuine ease
As up at midnight doth memory creep
Encroaching on ability to sleep
Draining dissatisfaction’s cup unto the lees

And, thirdly, ere they heaven hope to go
At last are given, nay, are forced, to know
Full measure what their victims felt
As disaster they were dealt ~
The path to paradise is ordered so

We know right now no anger will prevail,
Chastisement dissipate to no avail
In moments perpetration of ~
We know the answer must be love
But somehow love seems time again to fail

What should we do when’s thus, how balance find?
What secure secret place of heart and mind
Allows us such harm to avoid
Without becoming paranoid
Nor to our own necessities be blind?

We turn to sacred words which tell us we
Forgive such should just about endlessly
But how to do it we don’t know
Without in downward spiral go
A victim for all perpetuity

If you’ll allow a simple poet her
Humble opinion quietly proffer
On how give love its due compense
While yet attending to defense:
They not mutually exclusive are

Forgiveness nothing more means but that we
Find understandable and sad to be
The circumstances which create
The person to whom we relate ~
It doesn’t mean we tacitly agree

Or that the other freely might infer
That we intend ever to let occur
Further encroachment our wellbeing on
Nor any threat our peace of mind upon —
But to awareness doth the word refer

Nor any action specified we take
After we this inner connection make
Forgiveness may occur a distance from
Where you’ve the right to tell no one to come
You’re not required to relive the mistake

Which put you in that person’s path at all
No virtue in taking fall after fall
So long as without rancor we
Can set a healthy boundary
And rationally that boundary call

Without resentment’s denigration, you
Have kept forgiveness’ virtues well in view
You may dispassionate proceed
To meet your own survival need
By the relief your absence will accrue

There’s nothing in the holy texts that say
You any part of that scene must replay
Ever again with them to even speak —
Friend, when you turn to them that other cheek
Keep turning, so that you can walk away

*****

This poet presently lives at a fraction of her nation’s poverty level.

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