I don’t really feel like explaining the backround for this poem. It’s not offically a poem, either. I’d like to know what you think about it anyway, and how it might be improved.

Tortured soul, this is not compassion,
But strange fury-fled obsession,
self oppression.

You have left. Has your gypsy heart eaten the wanderer’s desolate seeking?
You have sent. Feet to the battlefields, slinging a wasted weapon on your back.
Now your eyes bring back men wasted, wreckage, and decay.

For truth to ponder, must you gaze
upon the widow’s mourning face? Must you embrace
or beget the sobbing child; must you the sullen stranger’s steps retrace?

These filthy bodies upon your breast,
these empty vessels of hunger and distress–
Must you reject hope to have a share of hopelessness?

Violent is your love, Passionate your peace!
Stand not so close to rotted teeth, breath not so deep
to make their breath your own.

Gypsy heart, tortured soul, can you not love peaceably, from a distance?
Why do you drink the music of a haunted generation and eat the lyrics of the dying?
Stealing tears, coveting despair–is it not enough to own that this is life?

Cannot our knowledge cure men’s woes and strife?
Cannot the Saviour’s bruised and broken heart suffice?
Would you take His place, make void His sacrifice?

We loosed your chains, but you’ve run off to join the slaves.
We sparked a light, but here you’re wrapped, blind, dark again.
Even as I write, you are tearing up this wisdom, stabbing yourself with my pen.