Steel doors – guillotine gates – <br />of the doorless house closed massively. <br />We were locked in with loss. <br /> <br />Guards frisked us, marked our wrists, <br />then let us into the drab Rec Hall – <br />splotched green walls, high windows barred – <br /> <br />where the dispossessed awaited us. <br />Hands intimate with knife and pistol, <br />hands that had cruelly grasped and throttled <br /> <br />clasped ours in welcome. I sensed the plea <br />of men denied: Believe us human <br />like yourselves, who but for Grace ... <br /> <br />We shared reprieving Hidden Words <br />revealed by the Godlike imprisoned <br />One, whose crime was truth. <br /> <br />And I read poems I hoped were true. <br />It's like you been there, brother, been there, <br />the scarred young lifer said.<br /><br />Robert Hayden<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-prisoners/
