In Distrust of Good
with a line by Wallace Stevens
A mind reasoning the good
in violence isn’t a good. Truth
wanders through its waving fields
of untruths, all alike grown tall
in the rich soil. "Who’s good?"
“Whose good?” the dead call beneath
gray trees with shorn branches.
An empty street, a dark house,
still, as if raided, and the life within
fled. The mind harboring
vengeance slips out of season,
heart’s munificent rule.
The good is evil’s last invention.
It casts aspersions like stones.
