My first reaction to this was "who says no one reads poetry?" The giddiness
that often overtakes me at moments of fear--I'm a regular stand-up comic at
funerals. Which brings me to a piece of my great sorrow that those I have
something to do with electing insist on slaughtering people in my name.
There's a nightmare that dates to my childhood that gets revived every time
someone is executed. Children are always being told that they've committed
one or another offense, and they often feel that the accusation is unjust.
Given their weak social position they know that there's rarely any
possibility of exoneration. This causes rage, and children, creatures of
impulse, are often filled with murderous rage, which is also a punishable
offence. Images of punishment tend to be internalized, as they certainly
were for me. I spent probably months all together of my childhood imagining
my death in the electric chair for crimes of which I was innocent. It
inhabited my dreams and it kept me up nights.
If for no other reason than that it terrifies children, capital punishment
should be done away with. The world is terrifying enough without it.
Mark
At 09:17 AM 6/11/2001 -0400, you wrote:
>Timothy McVeigh was executed this morning by the United States government,
>the first federal prisoner to be executed since 1963. His final statement
>was William Ernest Henley's poem "Invictus," published in 1875. Henley was
>26 when his poem was published. McVeigh died this morning age 33.
>
>
>INVICTUS
>
>
>OUT of the night that covers me,
>Black as the pit from pole to pole,
>I thank whatever gods may be
>For my unconquerable soul.
>
>In the fell clutch of circumstance
>I have not winced nor cried aloud.
>Under the bludgeonings of chance
>My head is bloody, but unbow'd.
>
>Beyond this place of wrath and tears
>Looms but the Horror of the shade,
>And yet the menace of the years
>Finds and shall find me unafraid.
>
>It matters not how strait the gate,
>How charged with punishments the scroll,
>I am the master of my fate:
>I am the captain of my soul.
>
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