These are Soselo's words to his Enemy:
Hollow, but most distinctively unhallowed;
mis-shapen idlelator in rags and straw;
train wreck waiting to happen when followed;
your soul's sole word is, "Appall, appall, appall."
Thus Soselo replies to unjust criticism, betrayal, and perfidy.
Author's Notes/Comments:
Some have suggested---and admittedly I am not qualified to decide for or against---that this extract of verse, and possibly other sections of the Soselo poem, may have had some influence on T. S. Eliot's major poem The Hollow Men.
The last line is very similar to the epigraph ascribed by Dmitri Shostakovich to his Fifth Symphony, which the Soselo preceded chronologically. By the time Shostakich began to experience the persecution that inspired the Fifth Synphony, suppression of the poem about Soselo had already been instigated. As with the suggestion regarding The Hollow Men, supra, I am not qualified to comment on the possibility that Shostakovich's symphony may have been affected by the poem about Soselo.
