Part Of A Letter - Kenneth Burke

Remember that night, after the card game
We went bumping down the road
drunk
insulting each other.

You said things so vicious
the next day you apologized.

But I could not recall a one of them.
I was robbed.

Yours for that most momentous of words: "Vindication"—
it is the labyrinthine word.
All hail to Mighty Æschylus.

Beat the devil, beat the devil, beat the devil,
Beat the devil, beat the devil, beat the...

(Hear the train
Drive steadily on
Towards nowhere)



[From:
Burke, K. (1968) Collected poems, 1915-1967. Berkeley: University of Caliornia Press. p30]

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