A Kind of Justice

This kind of justice hangs too long in the balance,

the guilty are finally weighed and found wanting,

a masonic finger has been lifted from the scale.

What now? Retribution? Castigation? Revenge?

Perhaps. Though at last we have seen truth in action,

after so many bitter years of truth’s inaction.

Fiat iustitia et pereat mundus,

let justice be done, though the world perish.

It will not, nor would it have done.

Yet it is late, it is exceeding late,

there are no gods whose mills

grind so exceeding slow

as those of justice.

And justice delayed is justice denied,

even a politician may tell the truth

in some unguarded moment.

While justice must not give way to policy,

 yet so often that is what it blindly does

so verdicts have a hollow ring

like a bell miscast and cracked by endless chimes

announcing some or other undetected crimes.