JUDGMENT

Down the deep steps of stone through iron doors

I entered that red room and saw the rack,

And round the walls I saw them sit in black,

The immutable and urgent councillors.

My heart was clotted with an old remorse,

Despair a vulture fast upon my back.

I saw my body like an empty sack

Tossed disarticulate on grated floors.

But even a wilder wonder at this crime

Tried in the dungeon of my own grim life

Woke, as your memory awoke with tune

That crazed the very walls. I stared through Time

Like to a man who stands with smoking knife

Above his dead, and sees the rising moon.