Poetry of the Damned
Copyright© 2026 by Oz Ozzie
Chapter 22: Poem of the Damned
the words of the condemned Merko Hunsen, spoken from his cell the night before his hanging, and set in verse by the hand appointed to that office
Since she made verses, I will make one too;
it seems the only thing now left to do.
They tell me she is somewhere safe and free,
and writing still. Then let her hear of me.
They rub it in, my keepers, with a will:
the biddable, the quiet ones, the still —
watch those, the cousin warned; and I swore mine
the stillest, broke-in, blank — and staked my name.
Beneath my table, where I proved her broke,
they grin to tell me, there she slipped the yoke.
I cannot trace the how. I owned the thing.
But she did it. There. They’ve wrung that from me clean.
For I have had it all explained, and well —
they took their time; they seemed to like to tell —
how every road I walked was of my making,
and this the road, and this the rope I’m taking.
I grant it. I am not a foolish man.
Let me go back, and trace it where it ran.
The plot first: yes. But understand me — they
came courting, and a courted man will stay;
and once a man is in, a man is in;
to leave is harder far than to begin.
I should have gone. I knew it. Even then
I knew it, as the best of honest men
know wrong and do it, having no good cause
but that the doing carried its applause.
The girl, before that. Well. A man is owed
some comfort on a long and thankless road,
and very nice she was; what’s owned is used;
I used her so, as any master would.
There was a thing she did — some scrap, some crust,
some beggar at the gate — I did not manage best,
perhaps, in that; it nags at me; no matter.
Before her, the promotion. All that flatter,
all that long service, and they gave the place
to lesser men, and left me my disgrace —
I, who had bled, who loved my king the best
of any man that ever served and dressed
his life in duty! There. There is the wound:
a loyal man, by loyalty marooned.
And Vinda gone, before all this, and gone
the way the good go — quiet, leaning on
no one, asking nothing, in the night;
there was nothing I could do, and nothing made it right.
Where did it all turn? I cannot find the place.
I only ever sought to serve with grace,
to do the proper thing, to keep my word —
and here I stand, caged, sentenced, like some wild
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