Right
Published in Dream Catcher
You are right and I am wrong,
completely and unquestionably wrong.
It is true that I thought I was right
and that, therefore, you were wrong
but I was mistaken. I hold up my hands.
You know best. I say this without irony.
You are right and I am wrong.
I take this on board. Fair cop, guv,
and all that. So what do you say
to a clean slate tomorrow,
no hard feelings, beginning anew?
No shadow of what is past, no ill residue
of that time when I thought - could have sworn -
that I was right and you were wrong?
For that was how it seemed. I make no apology.
We can be adult about this. I was right
and you were most definitely wrong
or that was how it seemed.
You were pig-headed (or so it seemed)
and quarrelsome and never entertained
my point of view. God knows, I tried.
I was reasonable and temperate
but your course was set and that was that.
Now that I've agreed (without prejudice)
that you are right and I am blindingly wrong,
perhaps you'll be good enough to concede this:
no offence intended, but you've been stupid,
insensitive and bloody-minded. If truth were told,
if you could look back with the benefit of hindsight
and mature objectivity, I have the feeling
you'd admit to this. But, hey, water under the bridge,
what's done is done, time the healer,
and all that. What does it matter
if the truth is, you were wrong and I was right?
We can be adult about this. I bear no grudge.
But if I were you, and this is not putting it too strongly,
I'd wonder how I could live with myself,
having perpetrated the hideous lie
that, sure as day follows night,
I was wrong and you were right.
