For Elsa
They should always have to ask for it-
But only after they have been instructed
In remorse. For the cannier psychotics
Understand that death is a door opening
To the Florida of their dreams and head for it
The minute it’s dawned on them they’ve no one
To rape but themselves, no one to kill
But those who deserve it. This diminishes
The thrill to that degree Florida
Starts to look good.
Would this be cruel
And unusual and, so, prohibited? Not
If we can plausibly deny it. Let us say
That when, in the first stage of their greased
Slide to Lethe, they are put on round-the-clock
Electronic display, this is not done
In a spirit of cruelty or retribution
But rather as instruction. And if some of us
Who have paid for the privilege of dialing
Their 900-numbers would seem to be harassing them
Cruelly, the prisoners have every opportunity
To call their callers to account. Just so long
As they answer their questions first:
Why did you murder them? How could you be
So cruel? Would you do it again?
Have you ever been raped in prison? Are you afraid
That you’ll be raped again? The same questions
Every day and all through the night, like water
dripping
On their foreheads. Eventually, in most cases,
A dent is made.
Yet there are a few who never ask
To be advanced to the next stage of their punishment,
Who seem actually to enjoy the phone calls
From angry strangers and whose sullen defiance
Is inexhaustible as the steam of geysers.
But even the stoniest of these will break
Beneath the strain of silence and neglect.
When the headlines have forgotten them
And all the survivors have spent their rage,
When the phone stops ringing and the prisoners
Can only sit there listening to the recycling
Of earlier diatribes, at last from sheer boredom
They’ll ask to be advanced to the next ledge of their
purgatory.
Here all is upbeat, bright, and normative
As bo’s sitcoms. Here the condemned are encouraged
To study the lineaments of the lives
They have smashed, reversing the tapes,
As it were, from the moment of impact, back
To some everyday of unsuspecting happiness
As when the victim, a sophomore at Julliard,
Essayed Les Barricades Mysterieuses
By François Couperin. His murderer,
Aged 15, an admirer of Dr. Dre,
Will be immersed in Couperin until he learns
To love it. Only at that point
Will he be allowed to request the coup de grace.
But what of the more common case
When killer and victim share the same dismal
Horizon, when it’s a toss-up which death
Would have represented the larger social benefit?
Should the state’s iron boot be used to trample
The perp’s soul till it yields some five or six
Thimbles of sympathy? Even then could we be sure
That a coerced remorse has its source
In anything more than the universal need
To appease one’s torturers? We cannot, of course,
And it is incumbent that we explain
To the condemned that there is nothing he can do
To make us believe his post-Watergate
Born-again glory isn’t a ploy. The brighter ex-cons
Understand this and wear their crimes
Like fur coats. Manson writes hit songs,
And North his bestsellers. In another century
They would have been the sort to deliver
A good bon mot from the gallows.
There will always be those unwilling
To share the guilt of the executioner.
Even now that Dr. Kevorkian has refashioned
The machinery so death is just a sigh away,
The old objection is still sometimes made
That killing people is wrong. As perhaps it is.
The object of capital punishment
Is not justice but poetry, a way of balancing one
Terrible headline with another of equal weight.
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