“It’s the Law” …
“Even when it’s something Bad?”²
Humanity’s Grim Justice goes its way …³
Law never made man
A whit more Just!⁴
Justice changes Colors & Shapes.⁵
They have little chance of resisting
The Injustice of the Powerful whose
Only weapons are Innocence & Reason:⁶
Justice is a Blind goddess: her bandage
Hides two Festering Sores that
Once perhaps were eyes.⁷
We’re sick of calling
Your Recklessness law!⁸
Those who ask Justice
Should not have to beg!⁹
Injustice anywhere threatens
Justice everywhere.¹⁰
¹ Denise Levertov, City Psalm
² Guillermo Del Toro, Patrick McHale, & Carlo Collodi, Pinocchio
³ Oscar Wilde, The Ballad of Reading Gaol
⁴ Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
⁵ Abu Salma, My Country on Partition Day
⁶ Aesop tr. Thomas James, The Wolf and the Lamb
⁷ Langston Hughes, Justice
⁸ Danez Smith, Dear White America
⁹ Sophocles tr. Theodore Howard Banks, Oedipus at Colonus
¹⁰ Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail