Fair Choice
Fair choice? The appearance of the devil! Suave Complicity with your vacillation To your entire undoing! A midwife Delivering darlings to your indecision - Twins, quick in their cradle, loud as alive, But rivalling eithers! Before your choice's fairness Humanized both, barbarously you might Have made beast-death of the one a sacrifice To the god-head of the other, and buried its right Before it opened eyes to be emulous. But now that your twins wail, are wide-eyed - (Tugging between them some frivolous heirloom) You must cold murder the one and force-feed With your remorse the other and protect him from The vengeful voluble ghost of the twin dead. Or you must bend your dilemma-feebled spine Under - as if nobly and under tons - Rearing both fairly. The spilt blood be your own! Your every glance shall see one of your twins An Abel to the other's bloody Cain.
Fair Choice - meaning Summary
The Cost of Indecision
The poem attacks indecision by imagining two possible choices as living twins. Once a person has allowed both alternatives to grow equally real, choosing one feels like killing the other, while trying to preserve both creates a lasting, painful rivalry. Biblical images of Abel and Cain sharpen the idea that avoiding a decision does not prevent harm; it merely turns the conflict inward.
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