They were hanged back-to-back in York County Gaol.
They were rough dreamers, raw believers, set out like killers.
They sprouted in Newport Station, Hants County, Nova Scotia, in 1925 and 1926.
They smacked a white taxi driver, Silver, with a hammer, to sack his silver.
They bopped Silver and hit backwoods New Brunswick in his black cab.
They slew him in the first hour of January 8, 1949, A.D.
They were clear Negro, and semi-Micmac.
They tooled all night between Fredericton and Saint John with Silvercoiled -- a void noose -- in the trunk.
They had face-to-face trials in May 1949 and backed each other's guilt.
George Albert Hamilton confessed -- to theft -- and mated the Sally Anne.
Rufus James Hamilton polished his refined, mint, silver-bright English.
They were dandled from a gallows in the third hour of July 27, 1949, A.D.
They were my cousins, dead a decade before I was born.
My bastard phantasms, my dastard fictions.
