Atavism

Grady McMurtry

2 March 1942

Come, my friend

I grow weary of this ceaseless bickering

Speak not of justice, or that right reward

Well bought with human sweat, and lost.

Blind Libra stands a pawn, her scales

Are pendulums to every vagrant wind of fate

That blows in sloppy gusts about her feet

And she, swaying upon her limber pedestal

Stands drunk and giddy in the gale.

We are young

In this, our span of life, have not begun

That which must find its end

In some far future aeon

And whose beginning was

Before the time of Adam, yet

We have this present life to live

It must be full, in what we do

Completion of each act must be

Fulfillment of our basic will.

In this I charge you strongly

Be true unto thine self in all that is

If aught would find you lacking let it be

Bright steel on which to prove thy worth

And know, that by this test are all things known.

And now

As swinging stars that graze and strain apart

To leave a wrecking torn and hot between

I would there were an end to this as sharp and quick

As knives in the darkness that have made

A decision, the one way or the other.

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