The gates clanged and they walked you into jail <br />More tense than felons but relieved to find <br />The hostile world shut out, the flags that dripped <br />From every mother’s windowpane, obscene <br />The bloodlust sweating from the public heart, <br />The dog authority slavering at your throat. <br />A sense of quiet, of pulling down the blind <br />Possessed you. Punishment you felt was clean. <br /> <br /> <br />The decks, the catwalks, and the narrow light <br />Composed a ship. This was a mutinous crew <br />Troubling the captains for plain decencies, <br />A Mayflower brim with pilgrims headed out <br />To establish new theocracies to west, <br />A Noah’s ark coasting the topmost seas <br />Ten miles above the sodomites and fish. <br />These inmates loved the only living doves. <br /> <br /> <br />Like all men hunted from the world you made <br />A good community, voyaging the storm <br />To no safe Plymouth or green Ararat; <br />Trouble or calm, the men with Bibles prayed, <br />The gaunt politicals construed our hate. <br />The opposite of all armies, you were best <br />Opposing uniformity and yourselves; <br />Prison and personality were your fate. <br /> <br /> <br />You suffered not so physically but knew <br />Maltreatment, hunger, ennui of the mind. <br />Well might the soldier kissing the hot beach <br />Erupting in his face damn all your kind. <br />Yet you who saved neither yourselves nor us <br />Are equally with those who shed the blood <br />The heroes of our cause. Your conscience is <br />What we come back to in the armistice.<br /><br />Karl Shapiro<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-conscientious-objector/
