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Execution Poems by Africadian poet George Elliott Clarke is presumably a "reimagining" of the hanging of Clarke's two cousins, George and Rufus Hamilton, for a murder in 1949 Fredericton, New Brunswick. The poem that opens this darkly stylish collection, which was originally published in a limited edition of 66 and took the 2001 Governor General's Award for poetry, is "Negation." It speaks to the place occupied by black folk in that part of Canada not so long ago. "Le nègre negated, meager, c'est moi:…. My black face must preface murder for you." Clarke's penchant for punning - sometimes clever, sometimes over-the-top - is as much in evidence as in his other notable works, such as Whylah Falls (1990), Beatrice Chancy (1998), and Blue (2001), which features a few of the poems in this collection. But neither the subject of the "you," nor much else in the whole sad ballad of Geo and Rue, should be taken for granted. "Negation" is about how whites viewed (and still view) blacks in this country and vice versa, as well as about how blacks "can't help" view themselves.

They seemed to have so much against them, George Albert and his brother, Rufus James, being "clear Negro, and semi-Micmac," but most of all themselves. The next poem, "George & Rue: Pure, Virtuous Killers," offers a brief of the murders, this book, the poet's motives for writing these words about "my bastard phantasm, my dastard fictions." Cousins or not, Clarke's ironic sense of humour is in fine form: "they had face-to-face trials in May 1949 and backed each other's guilt."

The narrative, such as it is, is not straightforward. It couldn't be. This story is not one to be understood by being read from beginning to end, like a court report or newspaper account, dazzling, damning snippets of which may be found here. Geo claims to have committed the crime of theft, which led to the death of Silver Burgundy at his hands by a hammer, in order to feed his "hungered" child and wife, Sally Anne.

I ain't dressed this story up. I am enough
     disgraced. I swear to the truths I know.

I wanted to uphold my wife and child.
     Hang me and I'll not hold them again.

Rue, for his part, just seems mean and nasty: "I'm negative, but positive with a knife," he says in "Identity I." "My instinct? Is to damage someone." As the more eloquent of the two brothers, Rue is the more deadly and least trustworthy. It is best, however, to approach both their testimonies from a side.

Clarke's poetry in Execution Poems is often reminiscent of 19th-century prose by, say, Austen or Dickens or any of the Brontës, in which the dialogue is wonderfully mannered: the artifice is meant to elevate the truth of the work, not obscure it. Nevertheless, certain poems remain less successful, less moving, though perhaps more for their point-of-view.

Even if the abuse of Geo and Rue by their father, as outlined in "Original Pain," was real, its (re)presentation fails to impress - especially after Geo's confession in the previous poem, "Ballad of a Hanged Man." It is understood: the brothers knew the difference between right and wrong. Whatever their father beat out of them - pity, fear, self-respect; "his Decembral love iced over our hearts" - moral judgement was not it. Their abuse as explanation for their crimes as grown men seems at once too common and needlessly complicated. Or perhaps it's simply a red herring. Murder, when you get down to it, is a brutal yet simple act; whether committed by rogues or the state. "Original Pain" does not convincingly translate into original sin, which is said to be innate rather than inherited.

This is not to deny Geo's or Rue's self-loathing. In "Child Hood I," Rue says, "[Pops] thought [Ma's] being Mulatto/ Was mutilation" (though not mutilation enough since he married her to martyr her). Rue makes a further case for himself in "Child Hood II" that he is a product of a poisoned environment, a treasonous upbringing. If not for a sadistic youth, he claims he would have embraced "Pushkin, Colette, E.B. Browning, and Alexandre Dumas - all those secretly Negro authors."

There is the suggestion in Execution Poems that we often adapt whatever we take into ourselves to our own purpose. The lewd becomes lyrical, almost chic, in "Love Wars," with Geo talking about "conversation-piece pussy;" then in "Georgie's Hit" wanting "to savour the thrash of fire in her gush,/ that hairline fracture twixt her thighs." Still, it's important to check for excess in art as in life. Some good, honest lines in the tradition of Cole Porter are occasionally followed by terribly ardent ones: "I treasure the pleasure of your hands on my back,/ your face stirring the heavens to a broth of stars."

Certainly in "The Killing," Clarke could have toned down the punning without loss of effect. "Rue: I ingratiated the grinning hammer/ with Silver's not friendless, not unfriendly skull." The act speaks for itself and, in this case, the protagonists. This poem makes it clear: Rue feels justified, Geo is haunted, both are responsible for the crime and will pay for it with their lives in this Canada. "The murder is 100 per cent dirt on our hands," says Geo. Rue's response: "So what?"

Is it possible to pardon Geo and Rue for their actions on some level because of the oppression they have endured as poor, black men in a racist society? Can some legitimate argument be made for diminished capacity based on their horrendous upbringing? Clarke, in approaching the story of his cousins as he does, reminds us that even if we don't (or can't) accept these arguments, we can't (dare not) ignore them entirely. Of course, the poet also reminds us, in "Trial I" and "Trial II," that such arguments shouldn't be entertained indiscriminately. It is rare for circumstances to so rule us that they utterly negate personal responsibility.

Geo knows remorse: "…Oh, if I could get away, I would do/ away with sickness and not get away with murder." Rue doesn't: "We're condemned because death is not condemned./ We're damned because desire is not damned." Yet they came from the same background, the same stock, the same house. No one can deny their suffering. It is relatively easy to see how wretchedness could lead them to rob a man for his money. Except that their anguish can't, under the circumstances, justify the killing.

"Malignant English" and "Prosecution" raise the question of the fairness of Geo's and Rue's trial. Given the evidence against them (and their defiant attitudes in "Famous Last"), it seems irrelevant. Not that it could, in reality, ever be such. "The laws preach Christ, but teach crucifixion," Geo coldly observes. If only this society were truly just and merciful, not one that allowed its own officials to pronounce, "Your faces are ochre;/ your thought mediocre." Maybe things would have turned out not so badly, if not entirely differently. The briefest poem in the book, "Avowals," is typical of Clarke's pointed wordplay: each line begins with a vowel. But with this poem Clarke forces a reevaluation of letters and words and language and learning; of his and of our own. The inclusion of "Y" as an English vowel raises more than one question. For letters, words, language, learning - all are only as benign as the individual wielding them or the one receiving them. And, it must be said, there was nothing benign to Geo and Rue in 1949 Canada.