The Anger That Was Right
There’s the anger you should feel and there’s the rest,
there’s the anger that is the honest interest
of the man who has been genuinely wronged.
There’s the anger that is loud and the kind that longed
for justification all along and found it late.
There’s the anger that comes righteous at the gate
of the event itself, no manufacturing,
no retroactive framework and no shattering
of the clarity that you had at the start,
no retroactive building of the chart
that proves you were right, because you knew it then.
You knew it when it happened and you’d been
in the right from the first moment of the wrong.
The anger that was right was in the song
from the first note and didn’t need the lawyer
of the retrospective to be the employer.
The anger that was right, I know the difference.
The anger that was right has no ambivalence.
The anger that was right is not the kind
the anger that was right doesn’t hide behind
the years of therapy and the frameworks and the look.
The anger that was right doesn’t need the book
to tell it whether the response was appropriate.
The anger that was right is just the graduate
of the obvious, the result of seeing clear.
The anger that was right was never in fear
of being checked against the actual event.
The anger that was right is exactly what it meant
to feel about exactly what was done.
The anger that was right is the righteous one.
The anger that was right and I will carry it.
The anger that was right and I won’t bury it.
I know men who were wronged and spent the years
in doubt about the validity of their tears.
Men who were wronged and then went looking for
the confirmation that the anger from before
was warranted, that the size of the response
was appropriate to the offense.
Men who had to be told by someone neutral
that the anger was correct, that the refusal
to let it go was not the neurosis
that they’d been led to think it was, the diagnosis
of the anger as the problem and not the act
is how it often runs and that’s a fact.
I don’t have that doubt, I never had it.
I don’t have that doubt and I’m not glad it
exists for other men who do, the doubt
is a weight to carry out
of the original event, the doubt about
whether what you felt was proportionate without
some outside confirmation is its own
damage and I’ve always known
what I felt and known it was correct,
what I felt and known it had no defect
of proportion or of logic or of aim.
The anger that was right, I know my name.
The opposite of the anger that was right
is the anger that is used as the flashlight
to find its own justification in the dark.
The anger that was built around the spark
of something smaller and then dressed as the big thing.
The anger that requires the examining
to find the fact that warranted the heat.
The anger that is bigger than the feat
of what was actually done and knows it deep.
The anger that is not the one I keep.
I keep the anger that was right from the start.
I keep it in the place where it belongs, the heart
of the accounting that I run for what was done.
I keep it as the evidence, the gun
that fires exactly where it needs to fire.
I keep it and I don’t require
the justification because the thing is there
in the record, in the facts, in the clear air
of the actual event. The anger that was right
is mine and it was right on the first night.