I don’t want to be repaid in kindness
you never felt a need to give before,
yours is a benighted act of charity and
not a gift; I see with the same clarity
as you with your eyes now. What you
gave for free was a sardonic lift up the
tree of life. You used to say victims are
as necessary as victors, they fuel a food
chain without which the vanquished
are indistinguishable from the rest.
Such largesse is conventional in your
view of a predator swimming beneath
shoals of countless surface feeders –
naive tiddlers eating lies designed to
fatten them as table fare. It was where
I first earned your keen appraisal.
Lean fish with angry eyes, you said,
qui est tu? I remember I replied,
you’ll know in time –
when I’ve digested you.
© 21 July 2007, I.D. Carswell
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