Are We All Not Brothers?

[David Morris]

   Was it (as it must look to any god of cross-roads) simply a fortuitous 
intersection of life-paths, loyal to different fibs,

   or also a rendezvous between accomplices who, in spite of themselves, 
cannot resist meeting

   to remind the other (do both, at bottom, desire truth?) of that half of 
their secret which he would most like to forget,

   forcing us both, for a fraction of a second, to remember our victim (but 
for him I could forget the blood, but for me I could forget the innocence)

   on whose immolation (call him Abel, Remus, whom you will, it is one Sin 
Offering) arcadias, utopias, our dear old bag of a democracy, are alike 
founded:

   For without a cement of blood (it must be human, it must be innocent) no 
secular wall will safely stand.

Auden, "Vespers," _Shield of Achilles_

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