Here in One Room

September 18, 1980

To find the strength not to strike back When all of Honour must fiercely claim Its right to be heard, and so set straight the glittering twists of a calculated lie is more than should be asked of the ardent heart! Or of a mind by now quite skilled enough in the high rhetonic of self-defence. . . . I open my mouth. And breath -- as if hot from a boil within of righteous wrath -- comes jetting up to the very brim -- O faint!m Almost too faint to be caught! Only just heard. And just in time (as a called-to child is stopped short by a voice that has cradled all it knows) to halt in one room, at this tindered hour my firebrand word. My act of war.