"The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together:
Our virtues would be proud, if our faults whipped them not;
And our crimes would despair, if they were not cherish'd by our virtues."
—William Shakespeare

Why the Fiend?
Ask your white page,
These faint margins we're assigned,

Your wars barely acknowledged,
Our past valor your offhand trivia.

You believe your hands
More bloodless than his,
Demand we see a difference
Between you two.

But should he triumph,
Though we perish amid mud and curse,
In some small corner of his memory immortal
Our modest names and deeds remain indelible,
Though every damned sun dim and sputter.

I see your stake.
Now you see mine.