Forgiveness

Don't kid yourself,
It's not always a virtue
It can mask cowardice
Flight from a necessary fight.
It's easiest to forgive children
But to too easily do is to
Rear unforgivable ungrownups
Who are mainly unforgiving
Themselves as well as others
Newman's gentleman never
needlessly inflicts pain
But the surgeon cuts out quickly
without compunction the deadly cancer
giving no benign tumors
Benefits of doubts they sometimes deserve
and Nazi doctors cannot be allowed
By history to hide their unblushing faces
Behind their collected Heinies
And I will not easily forgive
My family doctor bloated with half-earned dollars
Or my college chum who roams
Through Florida scrounging for
Condominiums to multiply a whiplash fortune with
Nor a colleague who smirks on
Petty put downs of a major poet
And I will not so soon forgive myself
For taking so long to learn these things.

2/8/75