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Branson spat against the wall. Under his breath he muttered his usual litany of obscenities. The rest of us, accustomed to a madman in our midst, huddled together and shook our heads.
We go without the meat and curse the bread. This from Branson. And we wait for the light. Robinson knew what the hell he was saying. Who would’ve figured all this?
The cell was originally constructed to cage one man, maximum two, if they had watched their diet. Avoided the bread. Ate more meat. But here we six were. The proverbial sardines, hardly able to twist and turn without breathing in foul breath or the rancid odor of too many weeks of sweat.
Before they stomped into our homes one winter night and hauled us away , we had only heard of one another by way of the periodicals. Two of us were over the hill anyway. Mr. Death was waving already and those two were feigning blindness or stupidity. Let him wait, they agreed. Did we ask to be born? So why not give us a little say-so about our deaths? We get zapped eventually. Why not let us go the distance?
Harrison didn’t look so good. Pallid. Bloodshot eyes. A tremor in his hands that wouldn’t quit. I said to him, Teddy, who in this world is safe anyway? So tomorrow morning we march out of this cocoon and fly home like new butterflies!
Harrison made a feeble attempt to laugh, but he started coughing, the laugh somewhere riding up or down his bearded throat. Home? Where’s that? We’re the enemy, remember? We’re those traitors who tried to tell the world New America was nothing like the good ol Old. For Gods sake, we’re poets! When did that become a felony?
Outside the cell one of the guards rapped his steel stick against the bars. The tall, grizzly one who covered his tracks by beating prisoners anywhere but on the face where it was an advertisement, a sign, to the warden who it appeared had some sensitivity to violence. The warden had a heart but it was too small and too tight to cram in a little sense of justice. In the morning when they parade us out of here, when they lead us into the spectator court, Warden Woos will make a speech about how national security is the main priority of a nation founded by Washington, and kept united by Lincoln, and blah, blah, blah, blah. If I weren’t going to my death on the gallows, I’d wring that hypocrites neck, break it the way ours would be broken by a noosed rope before a crowd of thousands. I’d skin him alive. Of all the guards, only one of them treated us with some semblance of respect: a fellow named Gerard, the brother of a former student of mine.
Remember Old America? asked Feeney. The flag before they bleached the colors out of her, left her white and black. For what? We should’ve read the message there. Poets like us. Dumb bastards all of us. We write these quiet verses, we take harmless words and string them together like dolls we make dance. We make words rhyme. Is that a crime? Nature poems about dark leafless trees in dark gray meadows bowing before a yellow moon who doesn’t give a damn. Or poems of love, ok? Love poems about who hurt whom and why and how and where and when.
For crying out loud, Feeney, shut the hell up!
We all looked at Thomas Merton Marks, who most resembled a poet, and were taken aback by his outburst. The day we were arrested, shaking in our pajamas, Marks was smiling, joking with the arresting officers, spouting off about how a man like him who won a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry was not about to spend the evening behind bars. But now, weeks later, the eve of our demise, he had finally learned the art of realizing it was ok to fall apart.
Easy, Tom, I said.
No! I’m a bit weary of all these soliloquies. Out of the mouths of babes. Grow up! We are marching to our deaths. Get it? All our books have been burned We will never witness another dawn after tomorrow.
Our pathshave crossed, brought us to this stinking latrine, and once gone, our footsteps will be wiped away as if we never existed. Poetry for us like us! is dead! I touched his arm to calm him, but he wrenched it away. You were a teacher, Shaba, he said to me. You taught those kids to love poetry and love America. What would you tell them now?
He had me there. What precise word could I impart to my students now, in light of my impending death? I had told them on hot August afternoons reading a poem cools you. And on frigid December nights reading a poem warms you. Poetry was the cure-all for whatever ailed you. It could grow quick scabs over the wounds of love and sorrow. It could save a dying dream. In its waters, poetry could wash you clean of all sins and stupidities. What could I tell them now? Six poets, unwilling martyrs for the cause of free speech, will swing like tunes when the sun wakes up tomorrow.
Finally I said to Feeney, I’d tell them I lived and died a poet. No regrets. I’d say to them, Memorize a line from one of my poems and never speak it aloud. Tell it to the crickets; they won’t betray you. Scream it down the streets of dream. I’d beg them all, Do not forget me!
Marks, Feeney, Harrison, Branson, D’Orio, and me. The Six Poets who played with words until the words, misinterpreted by the New American dictatorship, grew fangs and claws and silenced us.
Outside I imagined it was dusk or it was nightfall. A part of me wished outside this cell the end of the world was playing itself out. But the laughter of the sadistic guards told a different story. We were the news of the day. And tomorrow’s news would be even better. I thought of the woman I would love straight into eternity “whether heaven or hell! “and wondered if the same fear dictators felt towards poets filtered across to poets’ wives and lovers. Maybe Jayne was already
I let my eyelids, heavy as these prison bars, clamp down shut and I was grateful for a final night of sleep. As I raced my sleep feet towards escape in dreamland, the voices of the other poets, loud at first, then dwindled to a swirling, incomprehensible whisper.
I was racing through the night air. As the dream progressed, I thought, how we take this all for granted! The way the breeze cools our warm skin. How these legs keep me steady on these cobblestones. How these eyes have seen so much.
Who are you? asks a man I do not know. Why are you running? Are they looking for you?
I put up my hand. Too many questions, I tell him. One at a time. My name is Ben Shaba. I am going home. They are looking for me, but come the morning they will not find me anymore.
I awoke with a start. Who was that old man in my dream? Then it came to me: an old college professor named Dr. Yeager who taught creative writing. What was his famous line? Write your story down as if someone were chasing you. When you’re finished, you could give yourself up!
My compatriots were rousing from their own last sleep. Day had arrived.
Marks decided to speak first. It was obvious all six of us wanted parting words. We did our best. We still believe the poems we wrote were kindnesses to those who needed them. He threw up his hands as if to say, That’s all from me.
One by one we each said our goodbyes. Not one of us said I’m sorry for embracing poetry in his life. Not one said, If you let me live, I will hate words forever. It was not our sin, but that of the new American usurpers of power who stole away our freedoms.
We tried to at least appear brave. We’d never died before, never swung from a gallows rope. It would all be new to us. Branson spewed out a final barrage of bad words. Feeney said, God, I miss my Old America.
When the warden appeared at the barred door of our cell, he smiled. I wish I had better news, gentlemen, but Dictator-President does not commute the death sentences of poets. It’s just not done. Now had you all been murderers or rapists or even “no matter. Please follow me. You can stretch your legs on the way to the gallows.
In my prison shirt I hid the notebook filled with this story. It would swing with me and be as dead as I in a fiery barrel unless I passed it along somehow. Then Gerard walked into the cell in front of the warden who turned to head towards the killing place. I will escort the six of you. And when I let Gerard see the top of the notebook, now partly visible from my shirt, he motioned for it. I gave it. He hid it inside his officers’ jacket and nodded.
© 2008 Salvatore Buttaci |
