Once you have killed these men, destroy their skin And bone utterly and hide all vestiges Of their existence. Let only nothingness Remain of what your prisoners have been. Permit their friends no graves to lay them in, Erase their writings and their likenesses, Forbid their names in all assemblages, Cause them to be unmentionable sin. For if anyone so much as named their name It would mean not them but you yourselves and shame, And looking on their likeness he would see Not them in prison cells but you and me -- And find recorded on their graveyard stone That the death we meant for them became your own. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...AN INSINCERE WISH ADDRESSED TO A BEGGAR by MARY ELIZABETH COLERIDGE A STRANGE MEETING by WILLIAM HENRY DAVIES THE CHURCH WINDOWS by GEORGE HERBERT SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY: EDITOR WHEDON by EDGAR LEE MASTERS MRS. HARRIS'S PETITION: TO EXCELLENCIES THE LORDS JUSTICES OF IRELAND by JONATHAN SWIFT |