Litany for Dictatorships

Stephen Vincent Benét

Litany for Dictatorships

 

 

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 beaten By the skillful boys with the rubber fists, -Held down and beaten, the table cutting the loins Or kicked in the groin and left, with the muscles jerking Like a headless hen's on the floor of the slaughter-house 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 courageous But were beaten nevertheless. For those who spit out the bloody stumps of their teeth       Quietly in the hall, Sleep well on stone or iron, watch for the time 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 those Whose nameless graves are made in the prison-yard And the earth smoothed back before the morning and the lime scattered. For those slain at once. For those living through the months and years Enduring, watching, hoping, going each day 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 escaping Incredibly into exile and wandering there. For those who live in the small rooms of foreign cities 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 lie Nor in any of that earth. Their children are strangers. For those who planned and were leaders and were beaten And for those, humble and stupid, who had no plan But were denounced, but were 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 wheat-stacks, For those growers of bread who were sent to the ice-locked wastes. And their flesh remembers the fields. For those denounced by their smug, horrible children For a peppermint-star and the praise of the Perfect State, For all those strangled, gelded or merely starved 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 guards To make perfect states, in the names of the perfect states. For those betrayed by the neigbours they shook hands with And for the traitors, sitting in the hard chair With the loose sweat crawling their hair and their fingers restless As they tell the street and the house and the man's name. And for those sitting at the table in the house With the lamp lit and the plates and the smell of food, Talking so quietly; when they hear the cars And the knock at the door, and they look at each other quickly 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 last time Tony or Karl or Shorty came to the house And the family was liquidated later. It was the last time. We heard the shots in the night But nobody knew next day what the trouble was And a man must go to his work. So I didn't see him For three days, then, and me near out of my mind And all the patrols on the streets with their dirty guns 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 square And no man lifting a hand and no man speaking. For the cold of the pistol-butt and the bullet's heat, For the ropes that choke, the manacles that bind, The huge voice, metal, that lies from a thousand tubes And the stuttering machine-gun that answers all. For the man crucified on the crossed machine guns Without name, without ressurection, without stars, His dark head heavy with death and his flesh long sour 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 poison And barbarous with portent.       This is he. This is the man they ate at the green table 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 years The light falls 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.