Poem: I Now Pronounce You Dead
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/22/magazine/poem-i-now-pronounce-you-dead.html
By Martín Espada
Jan. 22, 2021
The federal death penalty has returned. Once, while I was in prison, I saw a man talk to a man on death row. The first man had no idea his friend would be executed. He asked, “When are you coming home?” The silence that followed has never left me. Martín Espada’s poem says that Bartolomeo Vanzetti was more than whatever the state chose to execute him for. This is the poem that asks us if it’s OK to name the date we’ll murder and bury another.