Robespierre

for Justin Clemens
 

Love begins where politics ends.

Alain Badiou

I caressed my beloved

with virtuous hands. Chastity

implied justice

in a world corrupted by desire

for anything other than the truth

of equality. She withdrew

her sigh, redirected it

at the tumbrel beneath our window

on its way to the machine

of purgation. The Guillotine

never my idea

of just punishment. She knows this

won’t deter my enemies

from shouting me down, smashing

my jaw, feeding my neck

into the lunette. And I know

she’ll be fetishised, free

to sip champagne at the salons

with ennobled courtesans.

And I know I’ll see this

as they hold my head aloft

to drip blood on my body

my mother, a poor woman

wan, beautiful like her

dying in childbirth, my father

repulsed by grief, leaving us

at the mercy of destiny. I tried

to change that, refused bribes,

carnality and I admired only roses

grown in a soil sated by the blood

of the corruptible. Yes, I grew

fond of the beheadings. When

I’m headless, cadaver, rotten

will she, my beloved, remember me

for my virtue, or for my terror?

Originally published in Ashes in the Air, by University of Queensland Press.