Soul Strut

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I'm reminded of this poem by Philip Levine, written in response to French atrocities in Algeria: 
	 
	Gangrene 
	Vous ??tes sorti sain et sauf des basses 
	calomnies, vous avey conquis les coeurs. 
	 
	Zola, J'accuse 
	 
	 One was kicked in the stomach 
	 until he vomited, then 
	 made to put back 
	 into his mouth what they had 
	 brought forth; when he tried to drown 
	 in his own stew 
	 he was recovered. "You are 
	 worse than a nigger or Jew," 
	 
	 the helmeted one said. "You 
	 are an intellectal. 
	 I hate your brown 
	 skin; it makes me sick." The tall 
	 intense one, his penis wired, 
	 was shocked out of 
	 his senses in three seconds. 
	 Weakened, he watched them install 
	 
	 another battery in 
	 the crude electric device. 
	 The genitals 
	 of a third were beaten with 
	 a short wooden ruler: "Reach 
	 for your black balls. 
	 I'll show you how to make love." 
	 When two of the beaten passed 
	 
	 in the hall they did not know 
	 each other. "His face had turned 
	 into a wound: 
	 the nose was gone, the eyes ground 
	 so far back into the face 
	 they too seemed gone, 
	 the lips, puffed pieces of cracked 
	 blood." None of them was asked 
	 
	 anything. The clerks, the police, 
	 the booted ones, seemed content 
	 to inflict pain, 
	 to make, they said, each instant 
	 memorable and exquisite, 
	 reform the brain 
	 through the senses. "Kiss my boot 
	 and learn the taste of French shit." 
	 
	 Reader, does the heart demand 
	 that you bend to the live wound 
	 as you would bend 
	 to the familiar body 
	 of your beloved, to kiss 
	 the green flower 
	 which blooms always from the ground 
	 human and ripe with terror, 
	 
	 to face with love what we have 
	 made of hatred? We must live 
	 with what we are, 
	 you say, is enough. I 
	 taste death. I am among you 
	 and I accuse 
	 you where, secretly thrilled by 
	 the circus of excrement, 
	 
	 you study my strophes or 
	 yawn into the evening air, 
	 tired, not amused. 
	 Remember what you have said 
	 when from your pacific dream 
	 you awaken 
	 at last, deafened by the scream 
	 of your own stench. You are dead.

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