Duel Back in the day when there was beef life this It was a question of honor Do you bite your thumb at me sir? I do not bite my thumb at you sir but I do Bite my thumb When Keats learned about the hoax by which His brother Tom sick with tuberculosis Was tricked into believing he was receiving Letters from a woman who loved him He vowed to kill whoever was responsible And on his gravestone bemoaned The malicious power of his enemies Whose names no one remembers now When our transgressions are so obscured By faceless intermediaries we can blame And so plausibly deny we had anything to do With the harm caused to the aggrieved party Forgive me for longing for the age When we would have arrived separately At the appointed field at dawn Of a day we both would have known One or both of us wouldn’t live to see the death of Bleeding out in the flagrant colors of dusk Having kissed our sleeping beloveds Having broken the weak chains of their encircling arms Having quietly selected our seconds from Amongst willing friends Who would have come out from town to watch Us either triumph or die Dawn was the hour of duels The moon in the west the sun in the east The birds singing their pretty little heads off In trees who turned their faces of leaves Towards the rise where men just like us had died The sun weaving the dew into mist That lay thick as gauze upon the low places And with solemnity befitting the occasion Lifted the pistols out of their velvet cradles And took turns loading them Letting everyone who wished to Hold the slugs And when all were satisfied stood back to back Clenching the curved walnut grips In our white-gloved hands And with our backs pressed together Felt a faint respect for one another Approaching something like that which we feel For those things we know are strong enough to kill us Before beginning slowly to walk away From one another only to turn around Abruptly as if the other suddenly Called our name