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70 DAYS IN THE SUN
Accursed am I,
And I without crime,
A criminal am I
For their execution.
From a scornful judge my mead I take, and why?
Is not the task he pays me for performed
At his behest?
He had been sitting still, rocking himself gently,
with the rhythm of the poem; but now he jumped to
his feet. His delivery of the verses became terrifying,
bringing the sweat to my brow—a rage that gnashed
its teeth, a vehemence that meant blood. Only the
voice of a Latin could rise to such a vibrant roar of
harshness and malice.
Cracking the bones of his quivering frame,
The wheel, the culprit its helpless game,
His sinews snapping under the battering blows
Of the ax descending; this agony, his throes,
Are my delight.
And as his head is severed from his trunk,
It rolls away
From the bleeding stump,
Tinging with blood the sand at my feet.
As the surging crowd like floods overflowing,
Burst out in anger at the blows I repeat,
At the jubilant scorn that glows on my brow,
As I laugh at them,
At their Judas’ pay,
It never swerved me.
With their wrath
They have served me,
Those cruel souls have trained me farther away
From man’s gentle ways to torture and to slay.
O wretched path!
The hangman yet is greater far than any king
That ever trod upon the laws of right.
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