Stealing Figs While on Holiday in Greece

Of all the brilliant sins, affected virtues are the worst.
—Søren Kierkegaard

I can’t comprehend this sky, so brilliant
on this isle, so clever, I find, blindly affected,
overwhelmed, to almost overlook my sins

hanging low, beyond a fence, sins
protected from my hands, how brilliantly
they tempt without the slightest affect

of knowledge that I am affected
by the thick scents and soft sins
their skins provoke, so brilliant

is their scheme, I must brilliant
be to release them from affliction, unaffected
as they are by sweet flesh of sins—

brilliant juice runs down my chin as I savor affection for my sins.