You who wronged a simple man



Bursting into laughter at the crime,



And kept a pack of fools around you



To mix good and evil, to blur the line,







Though everyone bowed down before you,



Saying virtue and wisdom lit your way,



Striking gold medals in your honor,



Glad to have survived another day,







Do not feel safe. The poet remembers.



You can kill one, but another is born.



The words are written down, the deed, the date.







And you’d have done better with a winter dawn,



A rope, and a branch bowed beneath your weight.











Washington, D.C., 1950





