I Have No Anger

by Brett Rutherford

After Victor Hugo, l’Année Terrible, “June 1871”

 

I have no anger, and that surprises you.
Your tiny cough is supposed to sound
like thunder. You growl, and puff away
to make your pale lantern flare, and I
am supposed to feel lightning at my heels.

For all the trouble you take
     to get my attention,
I scarcely notice you’re there.

You, self-styled villain, you sense
there is something in me that forgives you,
and that is like a slap to your face.
In fact, you are already punished
     for the mere act of wanting
          so much to hurt another.

It’s pitiful. Worse yet,
     when in a gang you plot
another’s downfall,
     and attempt to achieve it,
even the honor of a kick is denied you.
That hurts:
     the insignificance of hatred.
Not even a slap in the face in return
for all that plotting — imagine that!

Sometimes the outcast falls, and still
does not acknowledge what was done,
or by whose conniving he was attacked.
He acts as though nothing has happened.

And if the thinker appears to be disturbed,
it is not about you. He has the business
of the universe on this mind, you know.

Will I be irritated, then?
     I doubt I even know
the names of the ones attacking me.

We pensive outcasts
     may seem uncultured.
Before we get angry
     on hearing an insult,
we stop to look down
     at what is beneath us:

down there, among the ants,
     that buzzing sound,
a blur of eye-stalks and tentacles,
tiny, segmented minions
     with a hundred legs.
These are the ones
who have declared war on us,
a centipede conspiracy!