Did you expect sobbing,
collapsing to the floor and
weeping, bemoaning circumstance and
chance,
did you expect the man who kills and tortures
to suddenly think himself a fool?
When every day he carefully considers atrocity
and decides it the merest method of existence
and executes, joylessly, his grim tasks?
No, you can show him a portrait of evil
and he will never see it as a mirror.
There is no hero-turn trick outside the ring
or carefully foolish storybooks;
there are those who live badly
and reject redemption,
and the redeemers would have them live forever.
In Which The Villain Learns Nothing
