A Confession
One of my favorite Malk poems. Enjoy.
Charles Gerner
We found the rabbit before
I left for school. It was lying there,
on it's side, against
the red brick and weak cement of our
back porch wall.
It was breathing deep, and ragged,
and blood, now black and dried,
clung to its matted fur.
One of the cats had caught it the night before,
played, in that deadly way cats have,
and then left.
Maybe it had crawled into the wall
and pulled itself out later to escape.
A young thing, no more than a month or two,
whose unblinking eyes were half closed
as it waited to die.
I thought about that rabbit on the way,
but it was pushed aside for matters of
mathematics and hard, solid reality.
It was still there when I got home later,
its forepaws had pulled it closer to the walls.
It was breathing harder now,
and one useless front paw twitched madly,
as if scratch an itch it could not reach.
I had to do what I did then.
I had to do what I did then.
I had to do what I did.
I took the body, colder, now,
from so many hours in the weak spring day,
and held it in my hands.
I had to do it, God.
There is no other explanation.
I twisted, so help me, I twisted.
But still it would not die.
A long, high, squeal, open
mouth bleating for help from a mother
now long gone.
I stroked its fur,
God make it easier!
But I still had a ways to go.
Again I did it, twice,
oh God, no more!
Still it squealed, and bucked, useless legs
and forepaws dangling
as it clung on.
To the garden, now,
stumbling, blinded by the rain
or something else,
the living, tortured thing in my hands
still gripping my glove with its teeth,
praying, hoping to have the strength to finish
what my pet had so carelessly begun.
The ground is soft, from the rain
and warm with hidden heat.
I let it rest on the soil, one upturned eye
gazing at me. Hate, love, worship,
who can tell?
I raise the spade to end that stare.
My teeth clench, oh please,
NO MORE!
It lies in the garden now,
the body, now surely bereft of life,
kicked as I put it in the makeshift grave,
reflexes, I'm told, like a chicken
when you sever the neck.
I had to do what I did.
I had to do what I did.
I had to do it, God, because you wouldn't.
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