The Hangmans Great Hands

Read 'The Hangmans Great Hands' by 'Kenneth Patchen' and provide your summary and literary analysis in the comments section below.

The Hangmans Great Hands by Kenneth Patchen

 And all that is this day. . . 
The boy with cap slung over what had been a face. .. 

Somehow the cop will sleep tonight, will make love to his
wife... 
Anger won't help. I was born angry. Angry that my father was
being burnt alive in the mills; Angry that none of us knew
anything but filth, and poverty. Angry because I was that very
one somebody was supposed To be fighting for 
Turn him over; take a good look at his face...
Somebody is going to see that face for a long time. 
I wash his hands that in the brightness they will shine. 
We have a parent called the earth. 
To be these buds and trees; this tameless bird Within the
ground; this season's act upon the fields of Man. 
To be equal to the littlest thing alive, 
While all the swarming stars move silent through The merest
flower
. .. but the fog of guns. 
The face with all the draining future left blank. . . Those smug
saints, whether of church or Stalin, Can get off the back of
my people, and stay off. Somebody is supposed to be fighting
for somebody. . . And Lenin is terribly silent, terribly silent
and dead.

Form: Free verse

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