Convinced, 1957

At last I was convinced that giving in to their thinking represented a huge error in the evolution of my family affairs. Riven with a savage melancholy, not permitted out of the house without two minders—one armed with needle sedative, the other armed with arms—I armed myself with myself and threw off the vulgar superstition and reactionary domination that had up to then poisoned my mental library, imprisoning me, making me believe, with them, that I must have children when I knew that I must not, would not.    And I did not.

Source: Poetry (January 2012)