Edward Wright Haile - An Essay On Evil

To read intention in a villain’s frown
is worse than reading ripples in a river
for the traces of those its acres drown,
before they choose one of them to deliver.

And when it happens how it all seems so
preventable; the good are proud to say
we must have guilty consciences. But no,
his dead eyes meet us like secrets at bay;

and if the one beside me stops, I pass
indignant. This is not the sin I feel
on me, rather a serpent in the grass
laid by another for my brilliant heel.

True villains really make no frowns, thus proving
they have no souls but move by others moving.

Edward Wright Haile

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