Fair Choice Ted Hughes

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.