For all those beaten, for the broken heads,
The fosterless, the simple, the oppressed,
The ghosts in the burning city of our time ...
For those taken in rapid cars to the house and
By the skilful boys, the boys with the rubber fists,—Held down and beaten, the table cutting their loins,
Or kicked in the groin and left, with the muscles
Like a headless hen’s on the floor of the
While they brought the next man in with his white eyes staring.
For those who still said “Red Front!” or “God Save the Crown!”And for those who were not
But were beaten nevertheless.
For those who spit out the bloody stumps of their
Quietly in the hall,
Sleep well on stone or iron, watch for the
And kill the guard in the privy before they die,
Those with the deep-socketed eyes and the lamp burning.
For those who carry the scars, who walk lame—for
Whose nameless graves are made in the
And the earth smoothed back before morning and the lime scattered.
For those slain at once.
For those living through months and
Enduring, watching, hoping, going each
To the work or the queue for meat or the secret club,
Living meanwhile, begetting children, smuggling guns,
And found and killed at the end like rats in a drain.
For those
Incredibly into exile and wandering there.
For those who live in the small rooms of foreign
And who yet think of the country, the long green grass,
The childhood voices, the language, the way wind smelt then,
The shape of rooms, the coffee drunk at the table,
The talk with friends, the loved city, the waiter’s face,
The gravestones, with the name, where they will not
Nor in any of that earth.
Their children are strangers.
For those who planned and were leaders and were
And for those, humble and stupid, who had no
But were denounced, but grew angry, but told a joke,
But could not explain, but were sent away to the camp,
But had their bodies shipped back in the sealed coffins,“Died of pneumonia.” “Died trying to escape.”For those growers of wheat who were shot by their own wheatstacks,
For those growers of bread who were sent to the ice-locked wastes,
And their flesh remembers their fields.
For those denounced by their smug, horrible
For a peppermint-star and the praise of the Perfect State,
For all those strangled or gelded or merely
To make perfect states; for the priest hanged in his cassock,
The Jew with his chest crushed in and his eyes dying,
The revolutionist lynched by the private
To make perfect states, in the names of the perfect states.
For those betrayed by the neighbors they shook hands
And for the traitors, sitting in the hard
With the loose sweat crawling their hair and their fingers
As they tell the street and the house and the man’s name.
And for those sitting at table in the
With the lamp lit and the plates and the smell of food,
Talking so quietly; when they hear the
And the knock at the door, and they look at each other
And the woman goes to the door with a stiff face,
Smoothing her dress. “We are all good citizens here.
We believe in the Perfect State.” And that was the
Time Tony or Karl or Shorty came to the
And the family was liquidated later.
It was the last time. We heard the shots in the
But nobody knew next day what the trouble
And a man must go to his work.
So I didn’t see
For three days, then, and me near out of my
And all the patrols on the streets with their dirty
And when he came back, he looked drunk, and the blood was on him.
For the women who mourn their dead in the secret night,
For the children taught to keep quiet, the old children,
The children spat-on at school. For the wrecked laboratory,
The gutted house, the dunged picture, the pissed-in well,
The naked corpse of Knowledge flung in the
And no man lifting a hand and no man speaking.
For the cold of the pistol-butt and the bullet’s heat,
For the rope that chokes, the manacles that bind,
The huge voice, metal, that lies from a thousand
And the stuttering machine-gun that answers all.
For the man crucified on the crossed
Without name, without resurrection, without stars,
His dark head heavy with death and his flesh long
With the smell of his many prisons—John Smith,
John Doe,
John Nobody—oh, crack your mind for his name!
Faceless as water, naked as the dust,
Dishonored as the earth the gas-shells
And barbarous with portent. This is he.
This is the man they ate at the green
Putting their gloves on ere they touched the meat.
This is the fruit of war, the fruit of peace,
The ripeness of invention, the new lamb,
The answer to the wisdom of the wise.
And still he hangs, and still he will not die,
And still, on the steel city of our
The light fails and the terrible blood streams down.
We thought we were done with these things but we were wrong.
We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom.
We thought the long train would run to the end of Time.
We thought the light would increase.
Now the long train stands derailed and the bandits loot it.
Now the boar and the asp have power in our time.
Now the night rolls back on the West and the night is solid.
Our fathers and ourselves sowed dragon’s teeth.
Our children know and suffer the armed men.
