Konx Om Pax

THE STONE OF THE PHILOSOPHERS 83 THE WIFE-BEATER I BRUISED your body with the whip: Its wheals stand out in ridgéd azure. The savage blood upon your lip Images hurt, and hurt’s erasure. The pain transmuted into passion; And passion’s min was not pain; But my pain wears another fashion; My dead men do not rise again. You hurt me, and the silent skin Whispers no word of bleeding bruises; Your subtle hate, your cunning sin Brands and corrodes me where it chooses. I fear not them that kill the body, But rather them that hurt the soul: My soul with your disdain is bloody; Your stripes are none to make me whole. Could you but see my vitals torn, My nerves on rack, my tortured spirit— Of all the ills to mortals born This is the sorest to inherit. If you could see the branded token Of your invisible whip, the scars Of your intangible knife, the unspoken Agonies, silent as the stars! Then you should count the agéd lines That wrinkle up my boy’s blithe beauty :~— The Judge of all the Earth divines My wrongs and yours, and does his duty.