Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE CONDEMNED, by WITTER BYNNER


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE CONDEMNED, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Once you have killed these men, destroy their skin
Last Line: That the death we meant for them became your own.
Alternate Author Name(s): Morgan, Emanuel
Subject(s): Sacco-vanzetti Case (1921)


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...
Home: PoetryExplorer.net