Ali Alizadeh
Robespierre
for Justin Clemens
Love begins where politics ends.
Alain Badiou
I caressed my beloved
with virtuous hands. Chastity
implied justice
in a world corrupted by desire
for anything other than the truth
of equality. She withdrew
her sigh, redirected it
at the tumbrel beneath our window
on its way to the machine
of purgation. The Guillotine
never my idea
of just punishment. She knows this
won’t deter my enemies
from shouting me down, smashing
my jaw, feeding my neck
into the lunette. And I know
she’ll be fetishised, free
to sip champagne at the salons
with ennobled courtesans.
And I know I’ll see this
as they hold my head aloft
to drip blood on my body
my mother, a poor woman
wan, beautiful like her
dying in childbirth, my father
repulsed by grief, leaving us
at the mercy of destiny. I tried
to change that, refused bribes,
carnality and I admired only roses
grown in a soil sated by the blood
of the corruptible. Yes, I grew
fond of the beheadings. When
I’m headless, cadaver, rotten
will she, my beloved, remember me
for my virtue, or for my terror?
