Song of a Reformed Headhunter

Palinode X You must understand no one is tortured here unwillingly. The man who abandoned his parents at their hour of need climbs up the grinding stone with wailing abandonment. The corporate raider, for his greed, throws up his hands for the handcuffs and screeches joyfully as he is whipped. And dashing for the cliff-edge the double agent flings her beautiful body over a field of knives. They are all literalists, sensualists of a stripe, artists. The weeping and gnashing of teeth in the outermost darkness, those retractions are the poets. The above palinode is a retraction of t his ode (Part 7) .