With arms crossed against the jeers of the mob,
the martyr, stepping from the burnished tumbrel,
shrugs in the rain-heavy light. Chucked into the inferno
by no less a thug than holocaustal Baal, I would not
have behaved so well. So honorably, so humbly,
so maddeningly, quietly noble. But rather,
forehead to the dust, lifting it only so as to
facilitate my kissing of Robespierre’s ankles,
the doglike flourish of my grovel.
No humiliation too pink to swallow.