Innocence receives no justice:

They disembark, the next payment from Athens,

feel the sand and then the land

(at last after months at sea)

pitching beneath their feet,

the ankle chains lighter now

they know if they fall they will not sink.

How wrong they are

for sink they will despite

what they think as the follow the trail

down through the labyrinth… hope

a memory that fades (swift spring blossom)

as with each step

they move towards oblivion.

Each April they come,

(even then, hundreds of years before T.S

it was still

the cruellest of all the months)

payment for an error

like the sin (apparently) we all shoulder,

lumbering oxen, free will yoked to the ransom

a past places upon us —

and isn’t that the way of innocence,

doomed to forever bear the inconvenience

of past mistakes;

the way a child

huddles in the room at night

fearful of the footsteps

that echo into the past where other footsteps trod

down other hallways

to set patterns no child can escape —

the way a babe born deformed,

named a beast, is sent into the depths

to slay

the very innocents he mirrors.