You claim you are not your brother’s keeper,
but I detect the absence of a proper fear.
What will you say when I raise the sleeper?
Though you have ears to hear, you do not hear.
I begged you not to join your father’s war
and his dreadful crimes not to recommit.
You were warned, “Sin is crouching at your door;
it desires to have you, but you must master it.”
I would not take your offering of wheat,
so you swung your club to crack a brother’s skull
and left the body in the weeds—like a sacrifice of meat—
for the crooked beak of a scavenging gull.
Silence! Silence! The sleeper feels no pain,
and men will never speak the name of Cain.
but I detect the absence of a proper fear.
What will you say when I raise the sleeper?
Though you have ears to hear, you do not hear.
I begged you not to join your father’s war
and his dreadful crimes not to recommit.
You were warned, “Sin is crouching at your door;
it desires to have you, but you must master it.”
I would not take your offering of wheat,
so you swung your club to crack a brother’s skull
and left the body in the weeds—like a sacrifice of meat—
for the crooked beak of a scavenging gull.
Silence! Silence! The sleeper feels no pain,
and men will never speak the name of Cain.
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| Cain Kills Abel – Gustave Dore |