The Hangman's Great Hands By Kenneth Patchen

The Hangman's Great Hands

And all that is this day. . .
The boy with cap slung over what had been a face. ..

Somehow the cop will sleep tonight, will make love to his
wife...
Anger won't help. I was born angry. Angry that my father was being burnt alive in the mills; Angry that none of us knew anything but filth, and poverty. Angry because I was that very one somebody was supposed To be fighting for
Turn him over; take a good look at his face...
Somebody is going to see that face for a long time.
I wash his hands that in the brightness they will shine.
We have a parent called the earth.
To be these buds and trees; this tameless bird Within the ground; this season's act upon the fields of Man.
To be equal to the littlest thing alive,
While all the swarming stars move silent through The merest flower
. .. but the fog of guns.
The face with all the draining future left blank. . . Those smug saints, whether of church or Stalin, Can get off the back of my people, and stay off. Somebody is supposed to be fighting for somebody. . . And Lenin is terribly silent, terribly silent and dead. November 1937