'The Gaffe' by C. K. Williams

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

The Gaffe

1

If that someone who's me yet not me yet who judges me is always with me,
as he is, shouldn't he have been there when I said so long ago that thing
I said?

If he who rakes me with such not trivial shame for minor sins now were
there then,
shouldn't he have warned me he'd even now devastate me for my
unpardonable affront?

I'm a child then, yet already I've composed this conscience-beast, who
harries me:
is there anything else I can say with certainty about who I was, except that I,
that he,

could already draw from infinitesimal transgressions complex chords
of remorse,
and orchestrate ever-undiminishing retribution from the hapless rest
of myself?

2

The son of some friends of my parents has died, and my parents, paying
their call,
take me along, and I'm sent out with the dead boy's brother and some
others to play.

( We're joking around, and words come to my mind, which to my amazement are said )