Misericordia

T.J. Gillespie

The hardest lesson literature ever offered me
Is that we must never pity the damned.
I remember thinking about what little godliness
We have in our miserable hearts
When I read of Dante crossing the Styx,
His shaky boat rocked and tussled
By the angry hands of a filthy,
Muck-encrusted Filippo Argenti
Rising from the fen’s black and fetid mire.
In a circle of hell dedicated to the wrathful,
How surprising is it to hear the pilgrim say a prayer
Petitioning to see a man pickled in swill
and mangled by mud people?
How strange to hear that such a vengeful desire is right
And such suffering described as fitting?
So the poet sings a paean of thanksgiving
At the sight of a man, an enemy,
Biting his own body
And I suppress the incorrect desire to see
The end of permanent impenitence
And hard hearts soften.

Mercy is no virtue, says Aristotle,
Seconded by teaching, for the mind cannot see
When the heart stands in the way.
Mercy’s aim is not toward God, but Man;
It impedes reason and wanders from justice.
Still, I count your hurt as my hurt,
Your pain as mine own.
I weep for your sorrow,
And I mourn for your loss.
If that is my weakness, so be it.
If that is my sin, may I be forgiven.
And all I can ask is that if you see me—
In this world or next—cold or hungry,
Wet and alone, cast-out, broken hearted,
Disgraced and disconsolate or
Sinking in stygian muck
You’ll intercede on my behalf
With a whispered prayer and a kind word
Or a thin bladed dagger
Pressed quickly to my throat,
A mercy stroke for your adversary
To end the pain.