The Bridge

It was two nights ago I dreamed I came
Out of a brothel in a foreign town.

Behind me clinging hands and drunkenness
Of dead eyes searching for a living name.

There in the doorway ready to turn back in,
I saw a bridge across a swollen stream.

The larrikins who leaned there in a row
Were laughing, pointing something out below.

I ran and saw there in the river bed
A thief thrown down that should have long been dead.

For through his flesh stuck out the jagged bones
And as he moved they pelted him with stones.

Though I cried out and cursed them in my horror
I knew them well and a familiar terror.

For lust that moved like anger in my mind
Showed them and me inseparably joined.

So looking at the bones and bloody water
And my live brother, I was murderer.