Abel Defends Cain

My brother always held my hand, father-like,
when we crossed the arterial road on the way home.
From a status elevated by three colossal years
each year marking a more vigorous, more godly incarnation,
he still found it in his heart to hand me down
his outgrown T-shirts and his creased novels,
and not always without feeling a keen agitation.
When we swan together across the lake in summer
he would race ahead, and yet he always waited
for me to catch up to him before he raced ahead again.
On long journeys, he often vacated the best seat
when he grew tired, or when he grew too clever
for a monotonous roadside view. That big bully
in my dreams, the one who looked just like him
and who chased me around every dreamland corner
was just some wolfish imposter who couldn't be killed,
In the morning, the real him would be sitting there at the table
passing me the milk, once his own bowl had been filled.
When his blood-brother friends could not come over
he invited me into his carefully crafted world
where he allowed me to step into his beautiful traps
to put on the scariest mask, to try to uncover
his secret hiding places - places where even a tyrant father
would never care to look. And so, in return,
I felt bound to pay him back a good five times over,
insisting that it was he who was always given the first choice,
or taking one for him when he was absent,
or keeping a tally of his all his goals at all his matches -
these things were the very least I could do, I mean
I know how hard it can be to be a brother.