Faculty of Arts and Philosophy
Giel Vanthournout
The Rhythm of Trauma
Prison trauma in selected poems of Bobby Sands,
Oscar Wilde and Lord Byron: a comparative analysis.
Supervisor: prof. dr. Stef Craps
Master dissertation submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree
of “Master in English-Dutch”
Academic year 2013-2014
Acknowledgements
So many books, so little time.
Frank Zappa
Thanks to Koenraad Claes for introducing me to the prison poetry of Bobby Sands over a year
ago; Prison Poems will most likely never cease to intrigue me. Thanks to Stef Craps for the
guidance and valuable feedback, which has been a great and appreciated help. I would also
like to thank Toby Smethurst for the equally profitable feedback, which included interesting
references to war poetry. Special thanks to Mathias Rosseel for informing me about the art of
Egon Schiele, a small though cherished contribution to this thesis. Special thanks to my
friends, parents and girlfriend for patiently listening while I was rambling on about prison
trauma and psychological research. It is greatly appreciated, and I hope I am forgiven.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1
1. Introduction ………………………………………………………………………........... 2
2. Bobby Sands ….…………………………………………………………………………...4
2.1.
Context of imprisonment and writing ..………………………….……….………. 4
2.2.
Prison trauma in Bobby Sands’s Prison Poems…………….…………..……….... 6
2.2.1. Trauma causes and consequences…………………………………………….. 6
2.2.2. Attempting to relieve trauma: life rafts in prison……………………………. 27
3. Oscar Wilde.………………………………………………………………..……………34
3.1.
Context of imprisonment and writing.……….…………….……….…………….34
3.2.
Prison trauma in Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’….……………… 36
3.2.1. Perception of the prison trauma of the other…………………………….……36
3.2.2. Individual and collective trauma……………………………………..……….39
3.2.3. Bobby Sands and Oscar Wilde: kindred poets with kindred poetics?..............56
4. Lord Byron ……………………………………………………………………………...59
4.1.
A different perspective of prison trauma: Byron’s motivation behind ‘The Prisoner
of Chillon’………………………………………………………………………...59
4.2.
Prison trauma in Lord Byron’s ‘The Prisoner of Chillon’………….…….………61
4.3.
Prison trauma as a vessel for Byron’s Romantic poetics? …….............................72
5. Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………………76
6. Works Cited…………………………………………………………………………......80
7. Appendix……………………………………………………………................................85
Number of words: 27126
2
1. Introduction
“It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation
should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones.”
- Nelson Mandela
This statement by Nelson Mandela concerning his imprisonment rose to international fame
and recognition from the very second it was uttered. After roughly 27 years of incarceration
for being a direct threat to the apartheid regime, Mandela had experienced some, if not all, of
the predicaments that involved being a South-African prisoner (Sampson 223-225). Hence, he
never ceased to emphasize the problem of poor imprisonment during his later career
(Sampson 231). Considering this individual testimony is one of the many, it does not exactly
come as a surprise that prisoners worldwide have difficulties in processing the divergent
horrors they face in jail. Prison and academic reports, for example, frequently mention mental
instability, trauma disorders or even suicides as direct consequences of incarceration.1 When
daily life in prison becomes too depleting on physical or mental levels, inmates quite logically
seek for a way to relieve this enduring stress. Luckily not all of them took such dramatic steps
and found a different way of expressing their inner dysphoria; writing. Literary works
constituted during or after imprisonment not only contain interesting commentary on the
atrocities and maltreatment in some facilities, they also provide an insightful view into the
often burdened psyche of the writer. As a “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings”,
poetry can debatably reflect these traumatic experiences on an even deeper level than prose
(Wordsworth 18). This thesis will therefore provide a thorough analysis of the prison trauma
and its manifestation in some poetry, more specifically in the work of three poets who differ
on the scale of time and social circumstances. First of all, the poetry that Irish Republican
1
This statement is based on my personal lecture of psychological trauma studies for this thesis. For further
information concerning these works, see: 6. Cited Works, p. 80-84.
3
Army member Bobby Sands composed during his hunger strike in Maze prison will be
analyzed with a focus on its manifestation of traumatic experiences. This includes a
discussion of thematic elements, motifs, poetic techniques and everything else in the poetry
that is significant for trauma analysis. Consequently, Oscar Wilde’s lengthy poem ‘The Ballad
of Reading Gaol’ and Lord Byron’s ‘The Prisoner of Chillon’ will be tackled using the same
working method. Although Byron’s poem focuses on the reflections of a prisoner in his
isolated environment, Byron has never been a prisoner himself. This lack of personal
incarceration experience should, however, not be regarded as a disadvantage, since it
contributes to three divergent angles on imprisonment in this analysis: Bobby Sands: the
prisoner who never left prison and wrote his poetry on site, Oscar Wilde: the prisoner who did
leave prison and wrote his poem shortly afterwards, and Lord Byron: the freeman who
composes a poem on imprisonment. Therefore, it is safe to say that these three accounts of
prison trauma will only enrich the findings of the analysis and provide a broader picture of the
poetic approach on the subject in the nineteenth and twentieth century.
Moreover, my thesis will ultimately try to obtain this broader picture by also
comparing these three poetic testimonies mutually. In order to ensure an accurate and candid
analysis, the conclusions in the poetry analysis are supported by apt academic psychological
research on trauma theory and incarceration. Since literary studies often are complex by their
range of divergent interpretations, an interdisciplinary research that involves reputed
psychological work will without a doubt obtain a clearer picture in the psycho-analysis of the
poetry, and will therefore also contribute to more convincing conclusions. To facilitate the
accessibility of this paper and in order to provide extra context for certain statements on
excerpts, all major poems that are discussed in the analysis can also be found in appendix.2
2
See: 7. Appendix, p. 85.
4
2. Bobby Sands
2.1. Context of imprisonment and writing
Bobby Sands was born in 1954 and grew up as a young Catholic in Rathcoole, a
Newtownnabbey neighborhood in Northern Ireland. While in the other parts of the island the
birth of the new republic nursed mutual peace among the population, the unrest in the North
did not cease to exist. Starting from the late sixties with the Bogside riots in Derry, the three
decades that followed were characterized by chaos in Northern Ireland: the Troubles were
born (Whyte).3 The omnipresent dichotomy between loyalist Northern Irishmen, mostly
Protestants in favour of maintaining the strong bond with the United Kingdom and Catholic
nationalists striving for equal social rights and the union with the Irish Republic, determined
the course of his life. Sands and his relatives were often confronted with intimidation and
violence from the Protestant camp. In his youth, two men attacked him with a knife and later
on his family was forced to move after threats by the Ulster Defence Force, or UDA, a
Northern Irish loyalist paramilitary force (Hanke 19). After this series of incidents, Sands
slowly began to consider the law-enforcing authorities an enemy of the Catholics. Like many
others in the Catholic community, he expressed a need for self-defence against the threats that
endangered his life and the lives of Catholics in Ireland every day. Since everything else he
had tried before had been to no avail, he decided to join the Provisional IRA as a volunteer in
his adolescence (Sands 5-11). After actively participating in IRA operations, Sands was
arrested for the first time in 1972, when the authorities discovered four handguns in the house
in which he lived. Shortly after his release in 1976, he contributed to social improvement in
his neighbourhood. His social engagement involved community work, establishing a taxi
service for his housing estate, publishing his personal republican newsletter Liberty, and
hosting cultural and social evenings (Beresford 44). Nonetheless Bobby Sands also
3
A picture of the Bogside riots during The Troubles is included in appendix: p. 113, image 1.
5
maintained his connections with the IRA, and was arrested again and subsequently sentenced
to fourteen years for the possession of an illegal firearm after a bomb attack (Hanke 21).
Confined within the prison walls, the environment where he would spend the rest of his days,
he started writing the poetry that would eventually constitute Prison Poems.
Prison Poems was published in 1981, shortly after Bobby Sands’s death in the same
year. All of the poetry it contains was written during his H-Block imprisonment in the Maze,
and most of it had never been published before.4 Sands had, however, appeared in Republican
News with a few of these poems under the pen name Marcella -a reference to his sister’s
name (Sands 7). The poetry is written from a prisoner’s point of view, as it sketches the
horrors and oppression the narrator lives through day by day. Prison Poems therefore also
indirectly tells the story of the blanket protestors, who derived their name from the only piece
of improvised clothing they had left to cover themselves up. The ultimate goal of their hunger
strike was to contest their abuse in prison and to revive the special category status for IRA
prisoners, which had been ended by the authorities five years before, comparable to that of
political prisoners in wartime. The strikers had five main demands, namely “the right to wear
their own clothes at all times, the right to free association within a block of cells, the right not
to do prison work, the right to recreational and educational facilities and the restoration of lost
remission of sentence” (Hanke 21). Since Prime Minister Thatcher and the British
government did not want to agree to any of those terms, they continued their protest until
eventually ten hunger strikers died, including Bobby Sands. Sands had played a prominent
role in the course of this situation as he had been chosen to be the commanding officer of the
strike by his fellow republican prisoners (Hanke 22). Hence, Sands’s poetry is a poetic
testimony to the inferior treatment of these IRA prisoners, and is therefore also an interesting
subject for an analysis concerning prison trauma. In the current chapter, the thesis will tackle
4
A picture of the H-Block, the section of the Maze prison where Sands’s cell was located, is included in
appendix: p. 113, image 2.
6
the manifestation of prison trauma in some of Sands’s major poems. Because of the length
and versatility of these poems, it is safe to say they represent Prison Poems in general. If
relevant, cross-references to other poems in the book will be made.
2.2. Prison trauma in Bobby Sands’s Prison Poems
Depression, friend, it did extend
In waves through every cell,
Crept up behind and bit the mind
Like shock from bursting shell.
(‘The Torture Mill - H-Block’ 85-88)
2.2.1. Trauma causes and consequences
Before the term trauma can be used, it is necessary to map out what it actually entails in the
field of psychology. Recent psychological studies agree that at its core, trauma is “a physical
or psychological threat or assault” to a person’s “physical integrity, sense of self, safety or
survival or to the physical safety of another person of significance” to them (Moroz 2). When
applied to a prison setting, trauma generally involves physical or psychological violence by
either staff or inmates that endangers the mental and physical well-being of another prisoner.
It is important to check whether this kind of diagnosis can also be applied to the content of
Bobby Sands’s poetry, and thereby determine which events in particular can be classified as
traumatic. In order to make sure, it is only relevant to ask whether such experiences can be
derived from Prison Poems, since the poetic work will always remain the primary focus. ‘The
Crime of Castlereagh’, the opening poem as well as one of the longest, already reveals the
core of the poetry in Prison Poems: an account of life in the Maze prison during Bobby
Sands’s detention.5 The maltreatment facing Catholic prisoners, the direct cause of prison
5
The full poem is included in appendix: p. 85.
7
trauma in Sands’s case, instantly stands out as a central theme. The British authorities not
only protected Northern Irish society from IRA volunteers by locking them up in prison, but
they were also looking for insights into the plans and members of the organization through the
detainees (Hanke 15). The poem offers numerous references to the lengthy and unorthodox
interrogations captive republicans were frequently subjected to, during which human rights
were barely respected. The following excerpt shows one of the prisoners with sensitive
information being taken away from his cell. When he is brought back, the contrast with his
previous physical condition is remarkable:
I heard the moans and dreadful groans
They rose from some man’s cell.
And knew I then that this poor friend
Had something big to tell.
I’d heard him go some hours ago
His step was smooth and light,
But he’d come back like crippled wreck
Or one who’d lost a fight.
(‘The Crime of Castlereagh, 41-47)
By applying these drastic techniques, the prison staff did more than inflict physical injury on
the prisoners. Perhaps even more importantly, they instilled a constant fear of being the next
one in line for these interrogations, especially after intentionally showing the consequences to
the prisoners in the way Sands’s poem portrays. A few lines later, the poem confirms the
perturbation it causes among the inmates: “It tore our ears and primed our fears / This man’s
tormenting groans / It made men reel for all could feel / The hurt on this man’s bones” (5356). Sands’s poetry reveals more of the staff’s meticulous techniques for breaking a prisoner’s
will. ‘The Crime of Castlereagh’ gives the reader an impression of “The Watcher” (98); a
8
guard who goes further than simply keeping an eye on the inmates. These watchers carried
out the task of extensively observing the prisoner, both inside and outside of his cell area, and
consequently reported anything that could be used against him (Hanke 37). As can be derived
from the poem in question, they even went as far as to watch them take a shower or change
clothes and monitor them during their toilet visits. The Watchers’ frequent sudden
appearances and disappearances as part of the daily routine in the Maze prison is effectively
reflected by a repeated stanza in the poem:
I heard the clink of metal link
The Watcher was abroad.
He squeaked and creaked, tip-toed and sneaked
On shoes that were not shod.
N’er e’r he spoke and still unbroken
The silence hung in awe.
He watched you quake and watched you shake
And told them all he saw. (97-104)
While the interrogations were often dominated by daunting physical violence, the watchers
never laid a hand upon prisoners. Nonetheless, their form of mental violation was an equally
heavy burden to carry.
One would expect that night time would bring some rest for the prisoners after their
turbulent days; a hopeful assumption that Prison Poems disproves. The cell lights are
consistently switched on and off all day long, so it becomes practically impossible for the
prisoners to distinguish what time of day it actually is. ‘The Crime of Castlereagh’ contains a
revealing expression of the cell’s general discomfort: “who could sleep in sweltering heat /
With rattle of the vent. / ‘Pon canvas sheets caked firm in pleats / With sweat that men had
spent. / The bright white light gave no respite / And cut the eyes to shreds, / And left an ache
9
to devastate / Already bursting heads” (113-120). Nonetheless, this discomfort seems only
the slightest problem, since Sands states in the same stanza: “who cared of such in hell, / For
who knew when or there again / Just who knew if at all, / If the next creak or creeping sneak /
Was death’s breath come to call” (26-30). This excerpt effectively assures the reader that
there was never a chance of letting your guard down as a prisoner in Maze, as there was the
possibility of being taken from your cell at any time. The omnipresence of this fear can also
be inferred from Sands’s numerous repetitions; just as it haunts the prisoner’s mind, so the
thought of violence lurking around the corner also dominates the poetry on regular occasions.
The following stanza from ‘The Torture Mill- H-Block’ is another convincing example:
“We’d get it too was what we knew / When night time would unwind, / ‘Cause each man
knew just what was due / For each man wasn’t blind” (273-276).
6
Perhaps the most ghastly combination of physical and mental abuse is the suspicious
death of Brian Maguire, also depicted in ‘The Crime of Castlereagh’ where the narrator
admits he “had cried a tearful tide / In mourning of Maguire” (751-752). While the authorities
claimed he committed suicide by hanging himself on the air vent of his cell, later reports in
fact revealed murder. An examination of the scene proved that the vent lacked sufficient
strength to carry the weight of a human body. Ever since, the assumption has lived that he was
killed during a lengthy interrogation and after a sequence of chokings in order to make him
talk, partly because other prisoners experienced a similar treatment (Morrison 8). This
phenomenon is described as homicidal hanging by forensic pathologists; a modus operandi
they often encounter in prison situations, especially because of the known high suicide rate
among inmates (Leth 65). The Maze prison staff performed as the extended arm of the British
authorities in questioning and consequently gaining information from IRA prisoners . They
were given a degree of carte blanche; if these interrogations went wrong, they did not expect
6
The full poem is included in appendix: p. 92.
10
this to result in a demanding investigation, if any at all. Moreover, the British government still
holds back documents dating from the time of Bobby Sands’s incarceration and the hunger
strike (An Phoblacht).7 The Maze prisoners knew all too well what happened, note that Bobby
Sands writes “murdered Brian Maguire” and not just died (‘The Crime of Castlereagh’ 728),
and the death of Brian Maguire once more showed them what the British authorities were
capable of doing.
The awareness of the fact that prisoners could be killed by the regime as collateral
damage during interrogations, likely had a severe psychological impact. Sands’s words in a
smaller poem called ‘Wing Shift in H-Block’ of a striking response to this tactical violence:
“We knew their terror game alright, / And they our trembling fright” (21-22).8 Naturally, this
rate of efficient and planned violence is not what one would expect from a state prison in a
fully-developed Western European country like the United Kingdom, at least on the surface.
Certain psychological and literary studies however point out that these conditions of
maltreatment in prison and traumatized convicts are for the greater part determined by
contemporary social and political factors.9 More specifically, Sands’s time of writing prison
poetry matches a suggested template of intensified political polarization, growing intolerance
of the regime and more drastic punishments for dissidents (Van Vuuren 42). The H-Block
department of the Maze prison in which Bobby Sands and the other republican hunger strikers
were confined, located in a violent and torn Northern Irish society, is an environment that
encompasses all three of Van Vuuren’s conditions. As an arrested member of the Irish
Republican Army, a rebellious organization considered the enemy of the state, Sands
experiences the harshest treatment British prisoners could go through.
It may be useful to verify whether the prison poetry of Bobby Sands also reflects the
three factors mentioned in the aforementioned socio-literary study by Van Vuuren. Indeed, a
7
Taken from an archived article from An Phoblacht. For further information, see: 6. Cited Works: p. 82.
The full poem is included in appendix: p 97.
9
This includes Van Vuuren’s study, which will be discussed in the current paragraph.
8
11
closer reading of some poems does reveal a concordance with the psychological research. The
poetry itself, as an account of prison violence and terror, is a testimony to the political
polarization of the Northern Irish society and its division between republican nationalists and
unionists. Sands’s Northern Ireland is controlled by a political climate where unionist prison
staff deals with republican prisoners ”like hunters stalking deer” (‘The Crime of Castlereagh’
172). The actual polarization however, is emphasized by Sands’s words of protest as a
reaction to the regime. His poem ‘Rodai MacCorlai’, for example, tells the story of Rody
McCorly, a historical (albeit mythologized) figure who participated in a rebellion against
British reign over Ireland in 1798 (Bartlett 12). Although the poem suggests a sense of a long
gone and faded freedom, the speaker assures the reader that “the spirit of freedom knows no
end, nor ever shall decay” (34) and that it will one day thrive again as it did in the glorious
past of Ireland. Another remarkable feature of Prison Poems that corresponds with this
continuing republican struggle against the British authorities can be found in certain formal
elements. ‘The Crime of Castlereagh’, for instance, contains 96 stanzas which all fit the
ABCBDEFE pattern. This rhyme pattern can also be found in the traditional ballad, usually a
long poetic narrative which was often supported by music. It is striking how several
traditional Irish rebel songs, such as ‘Follow Me up to Carlow’, were written in the same
ballad form (McCall 22). From this perspective, Bobby Sands in the first place composed a
poetic prison testimony, but perhaps more importantly made sure to attune it to the Irish
republican heritage by connecting the content, and in some cases even the structure, with the
unbreakable spirit of freedom of traditional Irish folklore. His poetry, although full of grim
incidents, equally functions as republican propaganda. Therefore, it clearly represents Van
Vuuren’s template of political polarization, nationalism versus unionism, growing intolerance
of a regime, and more drastic punishments for dissidents, in this case the harsh policies of the
British authorities regarding republican prisoners. Thus, it is safe to say Bobby Sands’s poetry
12
vividly recreates an atmosphere that causes traumatic experiences in circumstances
of
incarceration.
Now that the political climate, the circumstances of
Sands’s incarceration, and
therefore also the cause of trauma have been sufficiently clarified, it can be relevant to offer a
deeper insight into the consequences the poetry reveals. In terms of emotions, the constant
fear of gratuitous violence during interrogations has already been discuss. However, the
prison staff’s policy and the prison traumas not only evoke feelings of terror among the
inmates. Prison Poems also provides bleak poetic evidence of the prisoners’ hatred regarding
the inflictors of the trauma. ‘A Tribute to Screws’ (a short poem aimed at the prison guards or
“screws” in Irish slang), for example, contains these unforgiving lines: “They will be saluted
with hatred, they’ll be acknowledged by scorn / And our ghosts will haunt them, and theirs
not yet born” (81-82). Another apt example of this hatred is ‘The Torture Mill – H-Block', a
poem in which the death of one of the prison guards is a central theme. He is found murdered
on his doorstep with “his deathly eyes in fool’s surprise” (15). The narrator describes how the
news of his murder is passed on from cell to cell, and how “each soul smiled like naughty
child / at what he had to tell” when hearing “a dirty Screw / had got his dues somewhere”
(111-118). Despite his death, Sands’s narrator does not cease resentfully ridiculing the prison
guard, for example in the following lines: “So bury him and let him lie / And play your brass
tattoo, / But write above his marble stone / ‘Here lies a stinking Screw’” (55-58). Poems like
these in particular seemingly justify the hatred for the other side in the conflict, because of
their horrific actions and the traumas they inflicted upon the writer and his companions. After
going through long-term maltreatment, the traumas not only turn the prisoners into anxious
beings, but also into vengeful individuals that would eagerly do to others what they had done
to them. Although the prisoners’ hatred can partly be understood as a logical reaction to the
maltreatment they experience on a daily basis, they also seem to lose a large part of their
13
moral awareness, a phenomenon that is not unfamiliar in psychology. Several studies on
trauma and posttraumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, indicate a degree of emotional numbing,
also known as EN, within the victims. More specifically, the patient suffers from “a cluster of
debilitating symptoms involving problems in the experience and expression of emotion” (Litz
et al. 607). These problems in experiencing emotions also affect the moral awareness of the
patients in question (Litz et al. 610). Another catalyst for EN is the recurrence of strong
feelings of fear; one of the possible symptoms of the disorder is in fact the “chronic avoidance
of environmental and experiential reminders of the trauma” (Litz et al. 609). The similarities
between the psychological diagnosis and Sands’s situation and poetry are striking. Hatred and
bitter mockery are in fact useful tools in suppressing the emotions evoked by death. Although
their hatred comes across as justified because of the immoral behaviour of the prison staff, the
fact that the prisoners are completely untouched by a murder could be a way to avoid the
memory of the traumatic events the prisoners themselves encountered.
Sands even seems to be aware that these are only masked feelings; despite the
acrimonious words that determine the poem’s atmosphere, he still realizes that “all men’s
blood is red” and that “King and Knave must have a grave / And poorest are the dead” (‘The
Torture Mill-H-Block’ 5-6). This part, among others, proves he still considers his oppressors
as beings with a core of humanity after all, despite the mutual loathing. While he most
certainly does not deny or forgive the individual acts of brutality towards the prisoners, he
also clarifies that the unfortunate political climate caused the clash of perpetrators and victims
rather than the intrinsic qualities of an individual. Psychiatrist and author Robert Jay Lifton
has a relevant theory for this observation. In a discussion of the United States’ more recent
wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, he mentions the impact of an “atrocity-producing
situation”: “an environment so structured, militarily and psychologically, that an average
person entering it, no better or worse than you or [him], could be capable of committing
14
atrocities” (Lifton 1).10 From this perspective, the meticulously planned criminalization
program of Northern Ireland corresponds to a large extent with the military and psychological
structure of US warfare in the way Robert Jay Lifton describes it. The policies of the Northern
Irish regime, which include the prison maltreatment and the traumas it produces, were
established on a higher level than the prison staff’s authority and are therefore equally to
blame for these feelings of hatred and emotional numbing. The aforementioned excerpts could
therefore be considered a jab at the highest directors in the hierarchy of British authority in
Northern Ireland, because the traumas are inflicted, nevertheless by individuals, under their
command. However, the traumas in Maze prison are not only just inflicted directly by human
beings. Prison Poems offers plenty of grim descriptions of the cell areas in which the blanket
protesters are confined; they spend nearly all twenty-four hours of the day within the
“nightmarish walls” of their scanty cells (‘The Torture Mill-H-Block’ 126). The following
excerpt from ‘The Torture Mill – H-Block’ quite ironically gives an impression of the
circumstances: “That eight foot space ‘twas freedom’s grace. / To exercise the bones, / With
every step the body wept / In awful moans and groans, / And sounded like the gnawny grind /
Of some one rubbing stones” (199-204).11 It is no surprise that protracted imprisonment in
such a depressing environment eventually becomes physically and mentally draining. As
Bobby Sands confirms in ‘The Crime of Castlereagh’, there are even days where “a man’s
mind spent all its time / On when he’d leave the cell” (27-28). The small area devoid of any
possibility of the slightest physical exercise, human contact, and natural light without a doubt
contributes to a feeling of depression among the prisoners. The poem that is perhaps most
striking in its characterization of the cell area is ‘A Tribute to Screws’, which is surely some
10
These insights are gained from the following article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-jay-lifton/waratrocity_b_1490147.html.
11
As an addition, the prison sketches of Egon Schiele -included in appendix: p. 114-115, image 4 and 5- are an
interesting visual portrayal of the cramped prison cells.
15
of the grimmest poetry in the collection.12 Certain stanzas could just as well come out of an
Edgar Allan Poe story; even if unintentional, there is a conspicuous resemblance between the
content and wording of stories like The Pit and the Pendulum, and The Premature Burial, and
Sands’s ‘A Tribute to Screws’. To give a clarifying example, Bobby Sands describes the
prisoner’s situation regularly by using imagery related to death. In ‘A Tribute to Screws’, the
narrator wakes up from his sleep in complete darkness, like “a corpse in the grave” (1). Next
to that, the cell is now “a tomb” or even an “ungodly dungeon[…]” (6, 17). From this
perspective, the macabre style of Poe’s American Romanticism is an effective literary
approach for Sands to adopt in order to emphasize the terror of the events in the poem and to
help the reader to easily visualize it at the same time. The horror becomes even more
confronting when the reader realizes that, while there is indeed a poetic shell, there is also a
major core of realism. The terror of the prisoner’s experience is, unlike Poe’s material, far
from fictional. The following stanza for instance, shares the blanket protestor’s view on his
cell: “Four bare walls make this prison cell / The eight by eight space the prisoners call hell, /
A concrete burden that is borne on the back / And some call it ‘bird’ and some call it ‘wack’.”
(‘A Tribute to Screws’ 9-12). No matter what slang term they use, it will not make
confinement in this dreary room any more pleasant.
Another aspect that contributes significantly to the incarceration trauma is the constant
isolation of the prisoner. Psychological studies on patients processing a traumatic event point
out that they often have a remarkable “feeling of being alone”, described by the patients “in
negative terms such as ‘scared’ or ‘frightened’” (O’Brien 219). When the supporting medical
staff and trauma team joined the patients in the room, however, “these negative emotions
associated with being alone were allayed” (O’Brian 219). Studies like these point out the
importance of human contact in processing a trauma; victims need someone to tell the story to
12
The full poem is included in appendix: p. 99.
16
in order to relive the trauma and eventually understand how to cope with it. Bobby Sands and
his fellow blanket protesters spend their days in isolation with no prospect of any helping
hand or human contact. Hence, after what he has been through it is no wonder that he also
contemplates the burden of isolation in his poetry. “There is no place more lonely than the
prison cell”, Sands concludes in ‘A Tribute to Screws’ (65). This mentally depleting feeling
of loneliness reaches one of its climaxes in a stanza taken from ‘The Torture Mill-H-Block’:
“Pitiful is the lonely man / Who watches night go by, / To hear the screams from comrades’
dreams / The gentle sob or sigh. / But wretched is that lonely man / Who knows that he must
die” (73-78). Maze prison itself already is an isolated bastion, even from the adjacent
Northern Irish society and its Troubles, a place that firmly adheres to its procedures and
thereby also keeps the stories of the prisoners in quarantine. The thought that the terrible
events will never see the light of day, let alone reach the public through news agencies, for
instance, must have been all the more daunting for the prisoners. In this respect, it could even
be one of Bobby Sands’s main reasons for confiding all the injustice done to the then nonexistent readers of his poetry. Because he still has the slight faith, as he states near the end of
‘A Tribute to Screws’, that if the public only “knew but the torture [sic], that the prisoners
know well”, they would “storm these dungeons” and “tear down this hell” (75-76).
Among the key distinguishing features of psychological trauma and PTSD, there is
another phenomenon that offers an interesting point of view for reading Sands’s Prison
Poems: dissociation. According to psychologists, “the construct of dissociation focuses on
three clinical entities: alterations in memory (e.g. aspects of the trauma not consciously
accessible); in identity (e.g. disengagement between the self and environment); and in
consciousness” (Feeny et al. 491). Although Sands’s poetry gives revealing and detailed
descriptions of the traumatic events, and therefore does not correspond with the first aspect, it
does contain disengagement between the self and the environment and alterations in
17
consciousness linked to trauma. Near the end of ‘The Crime of Castlereagh’, the narrator
experiences a hallucination in his cell. The ordinary shapes of the concrete walls that surround
him turn into haunted shadows and patterns that move around: “The shadows crept and
figures lept / Across the murky beams […] Then dearest Christ! As if enticed / They danced
around the wall / And peered at me so hauntingly / With faces white and small” (639-646).
Because of the beards and blankets that are mentioned in the following stanzas, it becomes
clear that these ghosts are the explicit representation of prisoners in Maze. Each one of them
“knew torture’s rack” (654) and glares at his bed “with tortured stares” (649), an
unambiguous link with the trauma of the interrogations. The narrator transcends his actual
environment and is subjected to delusions of his own mind. The horror in this part of the
poem is so lively and intense that the emotions these “painful shapes” carry are passed onto
the hallucinating narrator (680). The illusion even continues until “the quaking cell as if in
spell / Began to winge and weep” and a series of horrifying monsters surface (689-690). It
will of course never be confirmed whether Bobby Sands personally experienced
hallucinations or nightmares to such a fierce extent, but this does not give cause to question
the sincere impact of the events on the consciousness of the prisoners, as the poem portrays.
Rather, it is a powerful literary approach to convey the mental chaos and incoherence a
distorted psyche can cause. In ‘The Torture Mill – H-Block’ Sands describes another prisoner
who obviously suffers from dissociation: “he stared upon nightmarish walls / As if they held
the key / To some dark secret of his soul / That would not set him free” (127-130). One of the
following stanzas emphasizes his insanity, when he laughs “aloud behind a shroud / Of
yellow skin and beard, / His blazing eyes burned with despise, / And madness of the weird”
(139-142). To Sands, however, this behaviour is nonetheless far from abnormal, because he
knows all too well that “in this dark hell […] torture does such things, / And leaves the brain
like bare terrain / From which but madness springs” (145-148). Of course, Bobby Sands was
18
no psychological expert and was likely unfamiliar with any kind of psychological research.
Nevertheless his poetry, despite being partly metaphorical, proves that he was not oblivious to
the consequences of the exhausting imprisonment and the toll it took upon both him and his
fellow inmates. On the contrary, the numerous references to this kind of mental distress in his
poetry show that it had an impact that cannot be neglected.
There is, however, one conscious, and therefore remarkable, reference to the
terminology of psychological trauma in Prison Poems. It can be found in ‘The Crime of
Castlereagh’, where Sands unmistakably alludes to the shell shock: “Depression, friend, it did
extend / In waves through every cell, / Crept up behind and bit the mind / Like shock from
bursting shell” (85-88). Shell shock, known as Combat Stress Reaction in modern
psychology, is the behaviour of certain soldiers in World War I as a reaction to the trauma of
war (MacLeod 2). It is at least curious that Sands applies terminology related to war trauma to
a prison setting. A look at the syndrome’s symptoms, however, points out there is obviously
more to it. Because of the intense bombardments and without the means of fighting back
directly, the soldiers developed an anxiety of being helpless which disrupted their ability to
sleep, speak, and reason (MacLeod 4). When one compares these causes and symptoms to the
situation of the prisoners in Maze, the similarity is striking. They also experience long-term
violence and, in their powerless positions as convicts, are incapable of resisting or fighting
back. The symptoms of anxiety, sleeping difficulties, and dissociation are equally represented
in the poetry, as has been proven by the analysis so far. Sands’s Prison Poems contains a lot
of descriptions referring to panic attacks, moments when “the tension snapped like grizzly
trap” and gripped the narrator “by the throat”, his “thoughts capsized” and “drowned [him] in
fear” (153-158). Moreover, the sleeplessness due to the cell’s discomfort and the lurking
violence, along with the dissociation of the hallucinations, form two other motifs in his poetry
that make a convincing connection with shell shock. Besides that, there is one more
19
interesting symptom of the syndrome that Sands’s poetry is reminiscent of. In wartime, the
days of fighting took their toll on the soldiers, and a lot of them suffered from physical as well
as mental exhaustion. The things they had seen on the battlefield often left such an impression
that some of them developed what is colloquially known as the thousand-yard stare: the
soldier’s unfocused gaze into the distance, as captured by a lot of wartime photographs.13 The
ghostly silhouettes from the previously mentioned hallucinations in ‘The Crime of
Castlereagh’ that peer “so hauntingly / With faces white and small” and “moved around / Just
staring at the bed” (645-648), strongly evoke the shell shock victims with the thousand-yard
stare. The same goes for the gaze of a prisoner earlier in the poem, who is brought back to his
cell after an interrogation in which he most likely gave away confidential information: “I
caught his eye, as he passed by, / His terror stricken form / Search out the air for nothing there
/ Like blind man in a storm” (363-366). It should not be considered that surprising that Bobby
Sands was familiar with the phenomenon of shell shock, since it had already entered into
popular culture and memory, and was a well-known psychological injury of war. The vast
amount of poetry as a result of the two world wars definitely had an influence on the
popularity of shell shock. In his poem ‘Mental Cases’, for example, war veteran Wildred
Owen gives a description of shell shock victims that resembles the image of the hallucinated
silhouettes in Sands’s poem:
Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows,
Drooping tongues from jaws that slob their relish,
Baring teeth that leer like skulls' teeth wicked?
Stroke on stroke of pain, - but what slow panic,
Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets?
Ever from their hair and through their hands' palms
13
A picture of a soldier with the thousand-yard stare is included in appendix: see p. 114, image 3.
20
Misery swelters. Surely we have perished
Sleeping, and walk hell; but who these hellish?
(‘Mental Cases’ 1-8)
From this perspective, Sands’s poetic reference to shell shock could be based on earlier war
poetry that gives an equally ghastly picture of traumatized soldiers. Moreover, his references
to shell shock suggest that he was aware of his own traumatic experiences and their impact on
his psyche.
On a different note, the wording of Sands’s poetry is worth discussing in greater detail
as well, since it often makes starker the connection between the traumatic events and the
setting of Maze prison. The lifeless prison building is given a satanic connotation in the
following excerpt from ‘The Crime of Castlereagh’:
This Citadel, this house of hell,
Is worshipped by the law,
It’s built upon a rock of wrong
With hate and bloody straw.
Each dirty brick holds some black trick
Each door’s a door of pain
‘Tis evil’s pen, a devil’s den,
And Citadel of Shame. (753-760)
By associating the prison with a devilish lair, even the descriptions of the setting in the poetry
suggest the traumas the building conceals. Sands asserts that even the most common brick in
the wall triggers the memory of what happened before. Simply being there and observing the
environment already is an insuppressible process of reliving the trauma repeatedly. Moreover,
the prison staff are often described as Satan’s offspring or vile biblical creatures. The British
authorities become the “Demagogue” who “blasphemed to God / In mocking disrespect”
21
(723-724), while the prison staff are portrayed as “the devil’s sons and evil ones / Gathered
round like fire” (725-726), who learned their devious policies “in devil’s school” (‘The
Torture Mill-H-Block’ 490). Just as Biblical tradition disapproves of the evil of the devil,
Sands does not condone the inhumanity of the prison policy, and his specific wording
reinforces the traumatic effect. The same goes for the metaphorical use of imagery related to
predators and their prey in some of the poems. Sands’s comparison of the prison guards and
prisoners with “hunters stalking deer” has already been mentioned, but more references can
be found in Prison Poems (‘The Crime of Castlereagh’ 172). In ‘The Torture Mill-H-Block’
for instance, the prisoners are metaphorically on “a tortured way” like “frantic screaming
prey” (392-394), surrounded by prison guards who stir them up like animals.
Another relevant and religiously loaded poem that relates to trauma is Sands’s ‘Poetic
Justice’, which, despite its frankness, is not at all without a humorous touch.14 The poem
opens with the narrator confessing “the strangest dream” (1) he ever had. The central
character in this dream, and poem, is a man named Roy. In this poem, Bobby Sands actually
refers to Roy Mason, the leader and supervisor of Operation Demetrius: the criminalization
programme in Northern Ireland from 1976 to 1979 (Sands 74). This programme involved the
direct imprisonment of every individual with suspected ties to paramilitary organizations in
the Northern Irish conflict without any form of trial (Moen 1).15 This violation of fundamental
human rights went hand-in-hand with the dubious interrogation policy of these convicts in
prison, as earlier discussed. Sands’s poem can be considered a direct literary accusation and
condemnation of the directors of this crooked system. As the creators of the rules that shaped
the previously mentioned atrocity-producing situation, they are the ones responsible for the
torture and therefore also the initial inflictors of the trauma. Mason is blatantly guilty as he is
accused by God on Judgment Day, another association with religious sinning: “Roy, you
14
The full poem is included in appendix: p. 101.
Bobby Sands’s poem ‘Diplock Court’, also in Prison Poems, is an interesting personal account of this crooked
justice system.
15
22
tortured them / And you held them all those years, / Naked and suffering / They wept a
million tears” (55-58). At the same time, the poem can be read as a representation of the
prison trauma of the blanket protestors, who had their share “of torture pain and suffering”
(29). The last line of the poem, “Send him down to H-Block Five!” (62), is not only an apt
and ironic punch-line, but is also the ultimate proof of his guilt. A person capable of
committing such severe crimes towards prisoners ought only to receive the same treatment.
Sands also realizes that through his imagery and wording, the events described may have an
unsettling effect on the reader. He affirms this halfway through ‘The Torture Mill-H-Block’,
as he addresses the reader directly: “Shocked you are, by far […] Perhaps you say this poet’s
way / Is crude and very low?” (23-25). Consequently, he seems to justify his explicitness
because the reader does not know the true horror of prison behind the curtain: “but shocked
you do not know” (24). The following three stanzas give a concise portrayal of some of the
prison’s horror, touching upon themes of fear, violence and death, so that the reader would at
least understand the burden of it all. According to Sands, there is no need to be euphemistic
about the truth, even in poetry. As Wildred Owen puts it, “the poetry is in the pity”; in
Sands’s case that of his misfortunes in the Maze prison (Owen 266).
The abundance of causes for the mental distress of the imprisoned has already been
demonstrated by the length of my analysis concerning the manifestation of prison trauma in
Prison Poems. It is hardly any wonder, then, that some prisoners under these circumstances
eventually collapsed and attempted to put an end to their suffering by committing suicide.
Official reports back up this statement by speaking of a suicide rate “estimated at
approximately four times that of the general population” in prisons around the United
Kingdom from 1972 until 1987 (Dooley 40). The phenomenon of hunger striking, in which
Bobby Sands and over twenty other prisoners participated until some of them died, is however
no thoughtless approach to committing suicide. These prisoners started refusing food in order
23
to protest against their inferior treatment and the removal by the British authorities of the
Special Category Status for IRA prisoners. However, the 1981 hunger strike was also an
organized and planned protest, since the prisoners joined and left the strike in staggered
intervals in order to carry on as long as possible and arouse maximum public attention (Taylor
237). Of course, one could wonder why they chose for such a slow way of suicide. However,
the success of the hunger strike lies in its substantial coverage in contemporary newspapers
and thereby reached a broader public, while a ‘regular’ suicide in prison would go by rather
unnoticed (Taylor 250-251). With this in mind, it seems that the hunger strikers were
motivated by a certain duality between the will to give up on life and the will to still publicly
challenge the prison policy by any means necessary. This suicidal vacillation between life and
death is also reflected in Prison Poems. Near the end of ‘The Crime of Castlereagh’, for
example, Sands’s portrayal of the courtyard, on the way from the interrogation room back to
the cell, seems almost a Romantic celebration of life and nature:
As dawn converged the world emerged
Into a brand new day.
I stepped out to a sky of blue
Where silver fleeces lay.
The chirp of bird I plainly heard
And as the breeze went by,
I drank the air in thirsty tear
With greed upon my eye.
I drank the day o’er Castlereagh
Like one back from the grave,
And feasted high upon that sky
24
Like one with awful crave.
Each soothing breeze was laced with ease
Each golden ray with life,
Each little bird that chirped a word
echoed sweet as fife. (583-598)
In excerpts like this one the reader can immediately grasp the strong urge to live, to survive
life in prison and enjoy all that freedom has to offer. The landscape is peaceful, almost
bucolic, and forms a stark contrast with the usual setting of Maze prison. This lust for life,
however, is strongly opposed by other fragments from Sands’s poetry that share a feeling of
world-weariness under the burden of trauma and a hopeless future. Sands’s short poem ‘A
Place to Rest’ shows this desire to “gladly rest where the whin bush grow […] In Carnmoney
Graveyard ‘neath its hill / Fearing not what the day may bring!” (17-20).16 In certain passages
of ‘The Torture Mill-H-Block’, Sands portrays a prisoner “who knows that he must die” (78).
It remains ambiguous whether this death will be caused by the so-called accidents during
interrogations, or by the self-inflicted hunger strike. The fact is that Sands often gives
impressions of how deep the scars of the torture are for some prisoners. In ‘The Crime of
Castlereagh’ he mentions that the guards only handed out plastic cutlery to the prisoners, “so
wrists could not be carved” (196). Next to this, the prisoners had to walk on stockings; boots
were “forbidden things”, because “tortured men seek death’s quick end” and “one might die if
one might tie / A noose with lacing strings” (34-37). Moreover, the noose’s role as a recurrent
element in the poem only contributes to the suicidal atmosphere. It also appears in the
hallucination scene, where the monsters “spun a cord […] To make a noose that would induce
/ A tortured soul within” (‘The Crime of Castlereagh’ 709-712). Given the contrast between
these excerpts and those in which Sands lusts for life, it is clear that the poetry draws a lot of
16
The full poem is included in appendix: p. 102.
25
its dramatic effect and persuasiveness from the opposition between fighting fate and giving up
on life.
The poetry, however, seemingly justifies the suicidal thoughts of Bobby Sands and the
other prisoners of Maze, or at least tries to make them more understandable for the reader. It
emphasizes that these convicts are no legendary heroes, but ordinary men with the most
common hopes and fears. Sands’s narrator is under no illusion when he states in ‘The Torture
Mill-H-Block’: “For listen, friend, we don’t pretend, / There are no heroes here” (359-360).
Despite the republican cause they still spiritedly support in prison, they are as vulnerable as
anyone else to the horrors and traumas they encounter. Near the beginning of the same poem,
the prisoner is questioned by his own mind when waking up: “How much dare you to take? /
How much, how much, for pain is such / That even heroes quake” (70-72). By using such
constructions, which apparently address the reader directly, Sands encourages them to
contemplate what they would do in the same circumstances. Consequently, he questions the
reader as to whether these suicidal thoughts are really that abnormal as they first appear to be.
Given everything they have been through, especially without the prospect of any
improvement in the future, suicide could be regarded as a rather rational decision.
The stories in Prison Poems prove that these men are just as susceptible to trauma as
any possible reader, and this portrayal of vulnerability is supported by another recurring
element in the poetry: nudity. Bobby Sands mentions the prisoners are naked on various
occasions, and this motif can be interpreted on both a literal and metaphorical level. In spite
of their moniker, the blanket protesters actually had very few blankets to cover themselves up
in the first place. As such, it seems obvious that Sands should refer to them as naked.
However, the emphasis on the nudity of the prisoners in specific contexts in the poems reveals
a less straightforward explanation. When one looks for a deeper meaning behind the nudity, it
becomes clear that Sands frequently opposes it to the horror of Maze prison. ‘The Torture
26
Mill-H-Block’ contains a few instances in which the nudity of the prisoners stands in stark
contrast to their actions or environment, for instance in the following excerpts: “But bastards
are the hated Screws / Who torture men in nude” (47-48), and “Each cell does smell within
that hell / Where the naked cough and spit” (163-164). The prisoners, in both cases naked, are
portrayed as victims of either violence or the deplorable circumstances in their cells. Next to
the literal meaning of being naked, this could equally imply a deeper, mental form of nudity.
Under the burden of these traumatic events, the prisoners have become mentally fragile. Not
only their clothes, but also their minds have been stripped down, and they are as unprotected
as a naked man would be in a hostile environment. From this perspective, excerpts such as:
“’Tis a terrible feeling to be naked and down” (13) from ‘A Tribute to Screws’, as well as the
previous ones given, can evoke a wholly different metaphorical meaning next to the literal
interpretation. This point of view becomes even more interesting when one considers the
phenomenon of victimization, which is characteristic of a prison environment and is often
linked to prison trauma in psychological research (Hochstetler 436). According to actual
studies in a prison environment, the selective process of singling out specific prisoners and
violating them both mentally and physically “significantly predicts the occurrence of PTS
symptoms and depressive symptoms” (Hochstetler 436). In modern Western correctional
facilities, where the staff members are regularly inspected, prisoners are mostly victimized by
fellow inmates. In Bobby Sands’s case, however, it was the prison staff who pulled the strings
in an organized system of fierce interrogations and mind games in order to break prisoners of
choice. Moreover, victimization by the prison staff is yet another factor in a long list of
possible trauma causes described in Sands’s Prison Poems. His vulnerable portrayal of the
naked prisoners, in combination with the unsettling character of the incidents in general, is an
efficient representation of the victimization the convicts experienced on a daily basis.
Furthermore, nakedness and nudity gradually become synonymous with the prisoners of Maze
27
in ‘The Torture Mill-H-Block’, because the presence of these words truly dominates the
poem. When the news of the dead Screw is passed on from cell to cell, for example, “the
whispered word” is heard by “the naked” (‘The Torture Mill-H-Block’ 115). Because of the
repeated references to nudity, and perhaps the underlying image of innocent victims, the
reader quickly makes the association with the prisoners. On top of this, Sands uses powerful
metaphors to express the victimization by Maze prison’s staff: “They’ll let us know it’s time
to go / And gauntlet they will form, / From wing to wing their blows will sting / Like hornets
in a swarm, / And naked men must run its end / Like seabirds in a storm” (‘The Torture MillH-Block 283-288). With the aim of expressing the prisoners’ impotence against the horrifying
treatment they experience, Sands also uses other strongly polarized metaphors of innocence
and evil power. As has been mentioned, he often refers to the prisoners as helpless prey
wrought up by predators.17 In the same manner, they are described as for example a
“screaming child” on the run from “a horde of rats” (‘The Torture Mill-H-Block’ 367-368),
symbolizing innocence confronted with terrible threats. Through this explicit imagery, Sands
conveys an underlying division between right and wrong, which makes the prison traumas all
the more dreadful and understandable.
2.2.2. Attempting to relieve trauma: life rafts in prison
In Castlereagh from day to day
A thought’s a battle fought.
And sinking men cling fast, my friend,
To hope within a thought.
A cherished smile or voice of child
Are life rafts to be caught.
(‘The Crime of Castlereagh’ 187-192)
17
See p. 20-21 in the paragraph about Sands’s wording and use of metaphor.
28
Next to the poetic reflection of the traumatic incidents in Maze prison and their aftermath,
Prison Poems can also be considered an account of how these men then dealt with the
traumas in their attempts to alleviate them. As this section will illustrate, the poetry of Bobby
Sands contains many clues regarding how the prisoners dealt with trauma, both individually
and collectively, in ways that were not always as dramatic as suicide. These “life rafts” (‘The
Crime of Castlereagh’ 192) are what strengthens them in difficult times and what provides
them, to a certain extent, with the joie de vivre to make it through another day.
First of all, not every poem in the book gives a solely grim description of life in Maze
prison. On the contrary, a surprising amount of hope sprouts from certain passages, and it is
remarkable that religion plays a large role in this regard. A stanza from ‘The Crime of
Castlereagh’ offers an apt example. Although it may seem that the perpetrators of abuse in
Maze prison will never have to justify their actions and will walk free, the narrator assures
them there will eventually be a price to pay after death: “So listen well, you pimps of hell /
you beasts of Castlereagh! / Both law and man will meekly stand / ‘Fore God on Judgment
Day!” (796-800). Inspired by his faith, Bobby Sands considers the law of God, which stands
above all secular laws that govern society, as the absolute standard. Strengthened by his
confidence that justice will sooner or later be delivered, he manages to issue an explicit,
almost threatening message to the inflictors of the trauma. This optimism, drawn from
religion, alongside frequent Christian interjections such as “That God I nearly ran” (212),
“God forbid” (278), “dearest Christ!“ (‘The Crime of Castlereagh’ 643), underlines Bobby
Sands’s strong faith as a Catholic. The connection he felt with the Christian heritage and
morals is prominent in Prison Poems. As can be concluded from the poetry, it also gave him
strength in difficult times, and therefore it no doubt had an influence on the processing of
trauma in Maze prison. Furthermore, there are other examples of the calming effect of
religion in Sands’s poetry. As has been discussed before, one of the direct effects of the
29
traumatic incidents is an outspoken sense of hatred towards the inflictors of the trauma.18
However, one stanza from ‘A Tribute to Screws’ shares an interesting point of view that
contradicts these feelings: “But it’s more pity that I hold for these exploiters of pain / Than a
deep-scarred-revenge for to see them in flame, / For be it heaven or the republic, or what may
come to pass / ‘Twill be woe to the devils of this murderous class” (77-80). Because of his
religious principles, Sands understands the malicious nature of hatred and no longer allows it
to determine the processing of his trauma. Instead, he reverts to pity because he knows they
will eventually pay for their actions, whether in the afterlife or when Northern Irish
independence is obtained.
Another remarkable ‘life raft’ that characterizes Sands’s poetry is a strong sense of
freedom, albeit on a deeper level. Despite the fact that his physical freedom has been snatched
away because of his incarceration, Bobby Sands resolutely continues to stress his free will.
An excerpt from ‘The Crime of Castlereagh’ adequately reflects this idea of a mental freedom
that opposes his powerless position as a prisoner. Amidst the descriptions of a brutal
interrogation, Sands concludes the following: “There is no height or bloody might / That a
freeman can’t defy. / There is no source or foreign force / Can break one man who knows, /
That his free-will no thing can kill / And from that freedom grows” (553-558). The “foreign
force” (a republican jab at the superfluous presence of the British authorities in Northern
Ireland), indeed has the power to incarcerate and violate Northern Irish citizens. Sands,
however, stresses that he still possesses the free will to decide not to cooperate, which is
perhaps the most precious thing he has left. In other words, although he is fully subjected to
the vagaries of the interrogators on the outside, he is still free on this interior and far more
personal level. This consciousness of inner freedom has an obvious effect on his perseverance
during the interrogations, and the poetry confirms this by mentioning the “quite depressed”
18
See p. 12 in the paragraph on hatred and Emotional Numbing.
30
mood of the interrogators after he eventually “had not confessed” when leaving the room
(560-562). There is a certain inversion of the roles in this moment, where the trauma victim
becomes victorious over the perpetrators, and the poem transmits the curative power of this
reversal in its description of the feelings of relief and even pride when the interrogation is
over.
Besides these methods of dealing with the traumas individually, the poetry also bears
traces of solidarity among inmates who experience the same brutal treatment, particularly in
‘Comrades in the Dark’ one of the shorter pieces in the collection.19 The poem is an
allegorical representation of the republican struggle and the misfortunes it experiences along
the way. The republicans are pictured as “the fairest flowers of their kind” that “bloomed by
country lane and town, / In freedom’s fragrant scent, […] When dark days came and went”
(9-15). Their strength lies in their collective will to keep growing “midst fortune cold and
stark” (14), even when “some soldiers plucked the garden’s joy”, a metaphor for their
imprisonment (21). These flowers consequently “weep in dank cold cells” and “suffer
torture’s vilest scorn / To wither in their bloom” (25-28); thereby highlighting the horror of
the incarceration once again. Despite their maltreatment, the narrator assures us that these
flowers remain in hopeful solidarity. The outcome of his imprisonment is clear to Sands,
when he claims that: “I care not should we freemen die”, as long as their death is for the sake
of seeing “the garden flower”; that is, achieving the Northern Irish independence (33-34). In
the last stanza, these flowers are even depicted as martyrs. The thought of the scads of
flowers, (actually his fellow comrades in the dark that surround him in the prison cells and go
through the same hell), seems to strengthen him, and also reduces his fear of dying. This
solidarity also shimmers in other poems of the collection. In ‘The Crime of Castlereagh’, for
instance, the prisoners’ collective empathy is intensified when one of them receives a beating.
19
The full poem is included in appendix: p. 101.
31
The other inmates can hear “this man’s tormenting groans” (54), and Sands further writes: “It
tore our ears and primed our fears […] It made men reel for all could feel / The hurt on this
man’s bones” (53-56). The beating in this part of the poem is not a matter of individual
violence; rather, it becomes a collective physical abuse. As kindred spirits, the republican
prisoners share and experience the traumas of Maze prison with one another, a thought that
seemingly alleviates the individual burden, and from which hope and even optimism can
sprout, as is proven by the two cited poems.
Even the poetry collection itself can be considered a form of collective trauma
processing, of the prisoners pulling each other through and creating some distraction in their
lives. Danny Morrison, a convicted member of the Irish Republican Army and former
prisoner of Maze, has the same point of view on Prison Poems:
His poetry is the raw literature of the H-Block prison protest which hundreds of naked
men stood up against their cell doors […] to listen to and to applaud. It was their only
entertainment, it was a beautifully rendered articulation of their own plight. Out of
cruelty and suffering Bobby Sands harnessed real poetry, the poetry of a feeling
people struggling to be free. (Sands 10)
Thus, Prison Poems itself is in fact the combination of two ‘life rafts’ for the blanket
protesters: the act of experiencing poetry as pleasant entertainment, and a way of seeking
refuge and confirmation in the republican ideology. The latter is frequently emphasized in the
poems. An apt example can be found in an exclamation of the desperate prisoners in ‘The
Torture Mill-H-Block’, where they “fought back tears and scorned [their] fears” in order to
“conquer their black fame” by loudly singing “A Nation once again!” (505-510). This ballad,
composed by Thomas Osborne in the 1840s, is one of the best-known Irish nationalist songs
ever written (Irish Music Daily). Around Bobby Sands’s time, this would have been popular
because of the contemporary Troubles, although even more in particular because of the then
32
recent recordings by, for instance, the Irish Republican group The Wolfe Tones in 1972, as
well as the internationally renowned The Dubliners (BBC News).20 The prisoners’ political
principles as convinced republicans, in addition to them voicing their support for the cause,
obviously helped them to fight their fears, as the excerpt shows.
Moreover, there is another poetic feature in which Bobby Sands, again individually,
seeks refuge from the daily misery in Maze prison. Trapped in “dank cold cells, no sun to
light the gloom”, he often expresses the necessity of escaping it all (‘Comrades in the Dark’
25-26). In some of the poems, the typically Romantic motif of escapism is used to convey the
curative qualities of nature. By describing the tranquil scenery of nature, Sands creates an
environment in stark contrast with his prison surroundings; a mental refuge he can rejoice in.
This desire to escape is prominent in ‘A Place to Rest’, for example, where Sands exclaims
after a typically Romantic Natureingang in the first three stanzas: “Oh! And I wish I were
with the gentle folk, / Around a hearthened fire where the fairies dance unseen, / Away from
the black devils of H-Block hell, / Who torture my heart and haunt my dream” (13-16).
Although the atmosphere of nature brings solace, this feeling of freedom is only partly
achieved, as suggested by the recurrence of prison imagery that also dominates these
descriptions. The two following stanzas from ‘The Torture Mill-H-Block’ form a perfect
reflection of this clash between prison and nature: “Tis joyful thing in early spring / The
morning lark to hear, […] But who may know if lark or crow / With bleeding busted ear?
[…] Or who may sniff the fragrant whiff of daffodils and rose, […] When worse the course
you have to nurse / A broken bloody nose” (493-498). Although the narrator longs to escape
to an environment characterized by purity, peace, and simplicity, his imprisonment prevents
him from doing so. Perhaps the subtle references to classic Romantic poetry are an even more
remarkable characteristic of this excerpt. The “early spring” and “daffodils” mentioned in the
20
This reference is a newspaper article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/2591357.stm.
33
poem recall ‘Lines Written in Early Spring’ and ‘Daffodils’, two famous poems written by
William Wordsworth. Next to this, the recurring image of the lark can be linked to ‘To a
Skylark’ by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Both series of references confirm Sands’s attention
towards certain features of Romantic poetry, such as the motif of escapism. In the same poem,
Bobby Sands finally also portrays this escapism as a logical reaction to the traumas of Maze
prison: “And some ne’er see the flower or tree / Or know their lovely worth, / But in the
gloom or prison tomb / Men crave for Mother earth” (207-210). Therefore one can consider it
another life raft, albeit a troublesome one because of the difference of location and setting
between nature and prison.
Finally, not every life raft which prisoners in Maze cling to has the high ideological
value of republicanism and Romantic escapism. According to ‘The Torture Mill-H-Block’,
even the joy of smoking a simple cigarette already makes an invaluable difference in coping
with the traumas. In order “to tame the killing dread” (304), a lot of prisoners developed such
a craving for cigarettes that they even started smoking dust and the threads of their blankets
when being denied tobacco. As a result, Sands’s poem contains absurd scenes where “some
inhale to such avail / The smouldering blanket shred, […] So pale as death with burning
breath / they drag each reddened thread” (301-306). Strange situations like this one exhibit
how far prisoners went just to be able to soothe their distorted minds. To conclude, after a
diverse summation of life rafts, Prison Poems also gives an image between the lines of both
the grim and heart-warming ways in which the prisoners tried to alleviate the effects of prison
trauma. It often even symbolizes the characteristic Irish perseverance in times of misery and
the perpetual hope for better days.
34
3. Oscar Wilde
3.1. Context of imprisonment and writing
Oscar Wilde is the second Irish writer of the analysis who wrote poetry that incorporates
prison as an explicit subject. His poem ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ had never existed if it
was not for his sentence of hard labor in Her Majesty’s Reading Prison (Ellman 474).21 For a
whole set of reasons, the context and writing process of this long poem differs considerably
from Bobby Sands’s Prison Poems. This divergence is already shown by the reason of his
imprisonment. Well-known for his flamboyant lifestyle and daring wit, Wilde often was the
center of attention in his London area of activity (Ellman 59). This popularity also had a
downside, since his homosexuality eventually caused a scandal that lead to a court trial. After
being sued and openly accused of sodomy by the father of his lover Lord Alfred Douglas, a
response to an earlier accusation of libel made by Wilde, he was convicted to two years in
prison for this offence. Oscar Wilde’s spent his days in three different correctional facilities,
from Pentonville to Wandsworth, and eventually to Reading Gaol, which is known to be the
fiercest time of his incarceration (Ellman 463-479). It is there that he wrote an elaborate letter
to Alfred Douglas, ‘De Profundis’, which contains a lot of interesting insights on Wilde’s
position in society and the circumstances in prison (Holland 321). Because they contain
concrete and personal information on his imprisonment, the following analysis will also refer
to a couple of relevant excerpts of this letter in order to compare them to some aspects of the
poetry.
The central focus, however, remains ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’, the poem he wrote
shortly after his release, written in exile in France. The poem consist of six chapters and it was
first published in 1898 under the name c.3.3., a reference to cell block c, landing 3, cell 3.
Wilde’s choice for anonymous publication can be motivated by the negative connotation his
21
A contemporary 19th century print of Reading Gaol is included in appendix: p. 115, image 6.
35
own name carried at that time. Only seven prints later, in 1899, it was publicly acknowledged
to be written by him (Ellman 526-531). The poem itself soon grew to international fame,
already in its anonymous stage, and still is part of the contemporary Western canon; two
major causes of the diversity of close-readings that each foreground particular aspects of the
poem. A lot has been said about the motif of religion for instance, as a number of literary
critics read the poem as a commitment to Christian values and a reflection of the purification
of the sinning soul (Willoughby 127-133). However, as good as nothing about his portrayal
of prison, and the opportunities this brings along for an analysis on trauma, has been
discussed in depth. Because of the specific angle on prison trauma in this thesis, the analysis
will not cover the vast amount of religious and other interpretations, since their relevance is
questionable in this light, but will nonetheless refrain from too one-sided conclusions.
Finally, he wrote his poetry after the actual incarceration experience and in a different
setting, which differs from Bobby Sands’s poetry ‘on site’. This spatial and mental distance
between the scenery of the poem and Wilde’s environment may in fact be noticeable in ‘The
Ballad of Reading Gaol’. Moreover, his literary allegiance to Aestheticism, along with his
position as a prisoner convicted of homosexuality in a completely different Victorian
zeitgeist, are other factors that presume another poetic impression of prison trauma compared
to Bobby Sands’s portrayal. Therefore, both remarkable differences and similarities will be
emphasized and accompanied by suggested clarifications. Furthermore, the analysis of one
poem in particular, compared to the study of several poems of Prison Poems, can be
beneficial since it allows an in-depth analysis with eye for details.
36
3.2. Prison trauma in Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’
3.2.1. Perception of the prison trauma of the other
In comparison to the narrator that represents Bobby Sands in Prison Poems and his close
involvement with the traumas of Maze prison, the narrator in ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’
seems more detached, at least in the beginning of the poem.22 Next to an experiencer, Wilde’s
narrator is an observer who watches “a man who looked / with such a wistful eye” at the sky
in the prison’s yard (I, 14). As the poem gradually reveals, this man is waiting for his
execution by hanging because he “had killed the thing he loved / And so he had to die (I, 3536). With great attention and even empathy, he studies the movements of the subject and tries
to understand what he feels, which emotions control a man that knows he will die, “For none
can tell to what red Hell / his sightless soul may stray” (II, 59-60). Therefore, the first part of
the poem is completely focused on the traumas of another person. In the stanza that contains
the famous lines “yet each man kills the thing he loves” (I, 37), Wilde puts the crime in
perspective: everyone has the tendency to kill what he loves, or even love itself, although in
different ways. It is only the “brave man” that does it “with a sword” (VI, 18). However, other
men will not have to suffer to such an extent, unlike the prisoner. In a series of descriptive
stanzas from the first part of the poem, the narrator gives a lively account of the horrors that
the man must have experienced from the murder until his imprisonment. Wilde opposes these
horrors to the other ‘murderers’ that society allows to walk freely; they will not have to go
through what the prisoner experiences. As can be concluded from these stanzas, the days of
this prisoner are characterized by the visits of “dread figures” that “throng his room” like the
chaplain, the sheriff and the governor, who by their presence already remind him of the fact
that he will soon die (I, 68-72). There even is no opportunity for him to let his emotions free,
since “silent men […] watch him night and day”, “when he tries to weep” and “when he tries
22
The full poem is included in appendix: p. 103.
37
to pray” (I, 61-64). The sole purpose of the watchers in this stanza, who considerably
resemble the Watcher figure from Bobby Sands’s Prison Poems, is preventing the prisoner
from committing suicide. When the prisoner takes such a dramatic step, the narrator quite
grimly adds, he robs “The prison of its prey” (I, 66). These stanzas from the first part of the
poem show the humanity of the prisoner who, in spite of having murdered someone, still is as
susceptible to the horror of prison and death as anyone else would be.
The execution of the
prisoner is one of the central events in ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’. At the time of Oscar
Wilde’s actual incarceration, Charles Thomas Wooldridge, a trooper of the Royal Horse
Guards, was executed in the same manner for murdering his wife (Holland 210). Wilde’s
choice for this event in particular as the core of a poem that reflects his prison experiences,
already proves that it triggered a lot of emotions.
Nevertheless, there is a lot more to say about the hanging in order to further explain
its importance. When one looks back at Prison Poems, for example, it is interesting that Sands
also mourns a hanging that had an obvious traumatic effect, more specifically the homicidal
hanging of Brian Maguire.23 In both cases, the execution was performed by the respective
authorities and stands out as at least a questionable punishment. The difference with the
hanging that Wilde knows of, is its conscious completion. The incident with Brian Maguire is
the supposed result of an escalated interrogation and therefore partly accidental, while in the
case of Wooldridge, “Man’s grim Justice” (III, 187) was responsible for imposing the penalty
and carrying it out. Therefore, the poem can be considered a subtle complaint on the crooked
Victorian judicial system, an institution that Wilde also criticizes in ‘De Profundis’: “society
takes upon itself the right to inflict appalling punishment on the individual, but it also has the
supreme vice of shallowness, and fails to realize what it has done” (Wilde 6). His
incarceration led to the direct confrontation with the tragedy of a prisoner unable to fight his
23
See p. 9 in the paragraph on homicidal hanging in prison.
38
fate and the omnipotence of the authorities. The disgust he felt about this injustice, is also
shared by the narrator in ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’: the news that “that fellow’s got to
swing” (I, 24) unsettles him to such an extent that “the very prison walls / Suddenly seemed
to reel, /And the sky above [his] head became / Like a casque of scorching steel” (I, 25-28).
At the same time, Wilde contrasts this intense outburst of feelings with sentiments similar to
Emotional Numbing, one of the phenomena that psychologists also encounter in their study of
trauma processing (Litz et al. 607). The narrator, “though […] a soul in pain” (I, 29),
simultaneously is impervious to this distress. Instead, he gains an insightful view into the
prisoner’s mind and finds an explanation for his wistful gaze and agitated behavior: he
realizes what kind of burden that “hunted thought” must be (I, 31).
From this perspective, the poem also emphasizes the helpless position of the prisoner
by comparing him to the figure of Jesus Christ, for instance in the following excerpt: “He
does not pray with lips of clay / For his agony to pass; / Nor feel upon his shuddering cheek /
The kiss of Caiaphas” (I, 93-96).24 The first two lines can be considered a reference to the
agony of Jesus Christ in the Garden of Olives, or Gethsemane, where he prays to God in
agony to such extent that he “fell on the ground and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour
might pass from him” (Mk 14:32-36). Next to that, Caiaphas is a Biblical Jewish high priest
that allegedly planned the arrest and execution of Jesus (Gil 4). The kiss therefore is given by
Caiaphas as much as by Judas. The prisoner therefore is symbolically betrayed by the crooked
judicial and social system, just like Christ suffered from Judas’s betrayal. Another
resemblance between the prisoner awaiting execution and Christ can be found in two stanzas
from the second chapter of the poem. The prisoner displays a serene acceptance of his fortune
when he does “not wring his hands nor weep” or even “peek or pine” (II, 19-20). The
association with Christ’s famous words “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they
24
The “he” this stanza refers to is in fact “each man” who kills the thing he loves (I, 37), but does not go to prison for it.
Hence, in spite of the denials “not” and “nor” in these lines, Wilde does describe the prisoner’s situation.
39
are doing”, is not far away (Lk 23:34). The combination of these Biblical references forms an
apt example of Wilde’s approach on intensifying the traumatic effect of the execution in the
poem. Moreover, the question arises if a man with the same impotence as Jesus on his Way of
Cross, deserves this harsh punishment.
3.2.2. Individual and collective trauma
I know not whether Laws be right
Or whether Laws be wrong;
All that we know who lie in gaol
Is that the wall is strong;
And that each day is like a year,
A year whose days are long.
(‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ V, 1-6)
Next to offering a view on the traumas of the prisoner awaiting execution, the narrator also
frequently refers to the troubles he and the other inmates experience. One of the first aspects
in the poem that characterize life in Reading Gaol, is the routine of daily actions for the
prisoners. The recurring reference to the wistful look of the prisoner, for instance, always
happens when the other prisoners take their daily walk in the yard. In the fourth part, the
repetition of this walk is emphasized by the iteration of the lines “silently we went round and
round” (IV, 39-43). With nothing else to do and the boredom sprouting from the same old
walk, the prisoners are constantly haunted by “the memory of dreadful things” (IV, 45). The
engines that seem to drive the motion of the walk are the “Horror” that “stalked before each
man” and the “terror” that “crept behind” (IV, 47-48). This could allude to the fact that the
walk is actually forced upon the prisoners, or it could even hint that the traumas of prison urge
them to keep walking in order to forget. Another example of this routine can be found in the
40
narrator’s use of exact timestamps to illustrate that certain actions happen on fixed hours of
the day, like he does in the following lines: “At six o’clock we cleaned our cells, / At seven all
was still” (III, 169-170). The idea of obligatory routine can also be linked to the sentence of
hard labor, since the narrator claims that “every stone one lifts by day / Becomes one’s heart
by night” (V, 53-54). The prisoners are forced to do the same exhausting job every day, which
leads to a certain degree of automation and emotional numbing. Wilde even writes something
remarkably alike in ‘De Profundis’ concerning the numbing effect of prison: “The most
terrible thing about it is not that it breaks one’s heart […] but that it turns one’s heart to stone.
One sometimes feels that it is only with a front of brass and a lip of scorn that one can get
through the day at all” (Wilde 9). Wilde ‘s choice for depicting the routine, and automating
effect, of the prison obligations therefore clearly stems from his personal experience.
Suffice it to say that the repetition of these actions causes an extensive amount of
boredom and fatigue for the prisoners, both mentally and physically. Therefore, it should not
come as a surprise that the days in Reading Gaol go by slowly. ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’
portrays this apparent eternity of imprisonment with a strong sense of temporality. According
to the narrator, in Reading Gaol “each day is like a year, / A year whose days are long” (V, 5).
Other references the narrator makes to the sloth of time appear on regular occasions in the
poem, for instance when he mentions that the unceasing sound of the wind eventually turns
into the noise of “a wheel of turning-steel” to such an extent that the prisoners “felt the
minutes crawl” (III, 159-160). Moreover, a period of three years is repeatedly described as
“three long years” as well (IV, 73-75). Even Wilde himself was no stranger to this problem,
as he admits to it in ‘De Profundis’: “we think in eternity, but we move slowly through time;
and how slowly time goes with us who lie in prison I need not tell again” (Wilde 9). As can be
concluded from the poem, and ‘De Profundis’, the days in prison are identical, and the misery
is omnipresent. Eventually, this causes them to blend into one blurry sequence of impressions.
41
This conscious experience of time progress and the difficulty of distinguishing events from
the past, also known as temporality, actually often occurs in the processing of trauma. After
experiencing an intense trauma, the patients sometimes encounter difficulties in situating the
event in the chronology of time, and their later sense of time at the moment of the event
becomes distorted (Mather & Marsden 203-211). Therefore, Wilde’s ‘The Ballad of Reading
Gaol’ also exposes prison trauma in this crooked sense of time that controls the narrator’s
perception; a mental effect that is even stimulated by his prison environment. Finally, it is
worth mentioning that Bobby Sands’s Prison Poems also contains this sense of prolonged
time, for instance in ‘The Crime of Castlereagh’: “From day to day in Castlereagh, / The
hours tick by like years, / While to and fro men come and go / To play upon your fears” (439442). The fact that this phenomenon appears in the poetry of two poets that were incarcerated
also proves it is a significant part of prison trauma.
However, the Reading Gaol in Wilde’s poem does not only affect the prisoner’s sense
of time.
The prison also stands out as a den of evil by the narrator’s straightforward
description of the prison circumstances in the fifth chapter. The cell area is portrayed as a
cramped space that resembles a “foul and dark latrine” most, since it emits a stench that
reminds him of “the fetid breath of living Death” (V, 38-39). The scarce meals that the
prisoners receive consist of “brackish water” and “bitter bread […] full of chalk and lime” (V,
43-46). The narrator also assures this kind of environment is venomous for everyone; this is
the place where they “starve the little frightened child”, “scourge the weak”, “flog the fool, /
And gibe the old and grey” (V, 31-34). In the fourth part of the poem “the hideous prison
wall” is repeated three times (IV, 58), which contributes to a general image of filthiness.
Moreover, Reading Gaol is even associated with death, since the word appears in the form of
a personification a couple of times, for instance when “the Lord of Death with icy breath /
Had entered in to kill” (III, 173-174). This implementation of death as a character in the poem
42
demonstrates the tangible presence of death in prison. The prisoners do not only witness the
deaths of others, the inferior circumstances also oblige them to struggle to survive. The
omnipresence of death in Reading Gaol is also aptly reflected by Wilde’s portrayal of flowers
that wither in the polluted prison air: “But neither milk-white rose nor red/ May bloom in
prison air; / The shard, the pebble, and the flint, Are what they give us there: / For flowers
have been known to heal / A common man’s despair” (III, 91-95). Next to a literal reference
to the lack of flowers in the bare prison landscape, this stanza can equally be considered a
representation of the curative power of nature. In the light of Bobby Sands’s ‘Comrades in the
Dark’, this stanza could even be an allegorical representation of the Reading prisoners as
flowers. In his poem, Sands talks about the republican prisoners as flowers picked from their
green fields and left to fade away in prison, which resembles Wilde’s stanza to some extent.25
However, despite the flowers in Sands’s poem also “wither in their bloom” (28), he still
remains relatively optimistic and hopeful of a future where the republican ideology thrives
again, or as he phrases it: “I care not should we freemen die, / To see the garden flower” (3334). Wilde’s poem on the contrary is rather characterized by hopelessness and pessimism,
which is proven by the narrator’s claim that “something was dead in each of us, / And what
was dead was Hope” (III, 185-186). This denial of hope in any form also speaks from the
lines: “He did not wring his hands, as do / Those witless men who dare / To try to rear the
changeling Hope / In the cave of black Despair” (II, 13-16). Wilde’s meaning behind this
excerpt seems outspoken: it is foolish to look for sparks of hope in prison, because hope does
not belong there. Instead, the horror and misery of prison are so overwhelming that there is
only room for “Fear” (III, 129). Some of the consequences of this deeply rooted fear in prison
also appear in ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’. While “some men curse, and some men weep, /
And some men make no moan” (V, 69-70), and others even “grow mad” (V, 35), the narrator
25
See p.30 in the paragraph about ‘Comrades in the Dark’.
43
is sure that “all grow bad” (V, 35).
Another interesting interpretation of certain fragments from the poem also relates to
the atmosphere of hopelessness, and can also be considered part of the prison trauma. During
his description of what happens to the prisoner after he is hanged, the narrator contemplates
what awaits the prisoners in general when they die. In his pondering, the narrator comes to a
couple of frightening conclusions. First of all, the poem shows the lack of a proper burial for
the prisoners. After “they hanged him as a beast is hanged”, the prison staff simply puts him
in the ground in the same manner in the final stanzas of the fourth chapter (IV, 115-120). The
fact that the guards mock the corpse and strip down his clothes, another subtle reference to
Christ’s Way Of Cross, proves the degraded status of the prisoner. Furthermore, the traumatic
effect of being killed and buried like an animal is intensified by the image of his grave. This
“dishonored grave” (IV, 128) in fact is nothing but “a hole” (IV, 120), also represented as “no
grave at all: / Only a stretch of mud and sand / By the hideous prison-wall” (IV, 56-60). The
fear that this inferior and anonymous burial evokes is also demonstrated when the prisoners
pass by one of these open graves, waiting for the next executed prisoner. When he examines
the grave, the narrator notices that “With yawning mouth the yellow hole / gaped for a living
thing” (III, 61-62). After their confrontation with the executions and the deplorable
circumstances of the burials, the prisoners are aware that their lives could end in the same way
when dying in Reading Gaol. It is clear that the sight of this prisoner’s grave, the moment the
other prisoners have an unsettling look underneath the surface of prison procedures, left a
deep impact on them because they consequently go to their cells “with soul intent / On Death
and Dread and Doom” (III, 67-68).
Next to this distressing discovery, the narrator mulls over another worrisome aspect of
dying in prison: the fact that the prisoner will not be missed by anyone. As he comes to realize
in the following stanza, there are few people that would actually mourn his death: “alien tears
44
will fill for him / Pity’s long-broken urn,/ For his mourner will be outcast men, / And outcasts
always mourn” (IV, 135-138). In other words, only the other inmates know of this horrifying
death and therefore think about it, however, they do not really know the deceased. They
mourn over their own misfortunes in prison rather than actually pity his loss. From this
perspective, the broken urn of pity in the excerpt is a metaphor for the general loss of
compassion and pity of humanity, especially for the prisoners as the “lowest ones” in society
(Mandela). Perhaps even worse is the thought that a prisoner will always carry his past with
him. The idea that a prisoner remains one for life, and even in the afterlife, is incorporated in
the poem by the recurring motif of fetters and gyves. Despite his death, the executed prisoner
still lies “deep down below a prison-yard […] with fetters on each foot” (IV, 63-65).
Moreover, the prisoner’s grave is still located within the prison walls, which means he will
never even physically leave it after his death. The same image of perpetual imprisonment is
displayed in the lines “The world is wide, / But fettered limbs go lame!” (III, 134-135).
Although they may be free on a physical level, mentally the prisoners still are stuck to their
past and the traumas they carry along. However, Oscar Wilde did not only incorporate this
idea in the poem; he mentions something notably similar in the instructions to his publisher
Robert Ross: “I know that on the day of my release I will merely be moving from one prison
into another, and there are times when the whole world seems to be no larger than my cell,
and as full of terror for me” (Ross 5). His feeling that society still will remain a prison for
him, is also reflected in one particular line from the poem: “And thus we rust Life’s Iron
chain” (V, 67). Through this imagery, Wilde explicitly voices his conviction that life in
contemporary society has the inherent quality of metaphorically chaining people up or
restraining them, which only contributes to the general mood of pessimism that dominates the
poem.
Earlier in this analysis, it already became clear that the hanging stands out as one of
45
the major traumas in the poem. Another convincing argument for this assumption is the
imagery of Wilde in his recurrent descriptions of the scaffold. The hanging does not only
become a trauma for the prisoner awaiting execution, it also contaminates the minds of the
other prisoners. The narrator’s fear dominates his references to the gallows of Reading Gaol,
because the descriptions make them appear even ghastlier. Wilde seemingly stimulates the
reader to look behind the concrete form of the wooden construction and emphasizes its sole
purpose of killing human beings. For instance, Wilde’s narrator refers to the noose in detail as
“three leathern thongs” (I, 83) or “a murderer’s collar” (II, 47).26
After his personal
confrontation with the brutal efficiency of the executions, the narrator realizes that death is
never far away in Reading Gaol and that it can occur abruptly, or as he puts it: “Three yards
of cord and a sliding board, / Are all the gallows’ need” (III, 177-178). The horror of the
gallows even haunts the narrator and the other prisoners in their sleep: “We saw the greasy
hempen rope / Hooked to the blackened beam, / And heard the prayer the hangman’s snare /
Strangled into a scream” (III, 213-216). This excerpt, and the third chapter of the poem in
general, reflects the severe impact of the hangings on the prisoners by in account of the
nightmares that trouble them. Although there is little recorded data in psychological studies
on nightmares and their relation with traumas, some studies have proven that these dreams
can be an indicator for posttraumatic stress. As a means of clarification, the following passage
comes from a psychological study on the nightmares of sixty trauma patients that is published
in Journal of Traumatic Stress in 2001:
Ten of 21 dream reports from morning diaries were rated and described as similar to
the recent traumatic event. The participants reporting these distressing “trauma
dreams” had more severe concurrent PTSD symptoms than those reporting other
26
Note the shared fascination for the image of the noose between Oscar Wilde and Bobby Sands, see p. 24.
46
categories of dreams and had more severe initial and follow-up PTSD than those
without dream recall. (Mellman et al. 241)
In this light, the reaction of the prisoners on the hanging in the poem can without a doubt be
related to psychological trauma. Moreover, other psychological studies also confirm that
“PTSD sufferers often re-experience a traumatic event in the form of a ‘flashback’, nightmare
or recurrent memory” (Mather & Marsden 206). From that perspective, the following stanza
from ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ can also be considered a reflection of how the narrator reexperiences his traumas through hallucinations or nightmares. In his cell at night, the narrator
suddenly sees “evil sprite[s]” (III, 113): “They glided past, they glided fast, / Like travelers
through a mist: / They mocked the moon in rigadoon / Of delicate turn and twist, / And with
formal pace and loathsome grace / The phantoms kept their tryst” (III, 115-120). Just as was
the case in ‘The Crime of Castlereagh’, where the narrator is haunted by similar hallucinations
in his cell, these evil spirits again remind of the prisoners of Reading Gaol that died, as they
evoke a deep feeling of terror within the narrator.27 The re-experiencing of traumas through
hallucinations in both poems can be linked to Freud’s principle of Nachträglichkeit, which
describes a temporal relation between two events of a different kind. The following study
links these two events in Freud’s theory to nightmares and hallucinations of trauma patients:
The first [event] has the character of shock or surprise and is often of such traumatic
intensity that the subject is unable to assimilate it or properly experience it. At a later
time, a relatively trivial event, […] catalyses a response of disproportionate affective
charge, only explicable […] by reference to the first event. He paradox of
Nachträglichkeit is that the first event is only experienced after the second event even
though the latter is not chronologically prior. (Mather & Marsden 211)
27
See p. 17 for the paragraph on hallucinations in Sands’s poetry.
47
Hence, the hallucinations in both poems can be regarded as examples of Nachträglichkeit.
The narrators re-experience horrible events that they know of, the deaths of other prisoners,
far more intensely than before. The revisit of the trauma is also triggered by a trivial event, the
shadows in their cells, and happens after the actual event has occurred. Not only do the
silhouettes remind the narrator of the executed prisoner in ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol, his
deep fear is also provoked by the words of the imaginary shapes: “The world is wide, / But
fettered limbs go lame!” (III, 133-134). This refers to another sincere concern of the narrator:
the question whether a prisoner can ever go back to a normal life after his sentence.
Furthermore, the poem contains other elements triggered by the execution that can
reflect trauma. On the moment the hanging takes place in the poem, the narrator mentions
remarkably few details about the event. Instead of the elaborate grim descriptions of the
gallows, the stanza that refers to his death is characterized by brevity on behalf of the narrator.
The narrator first tells how the prisoners “watched him day by day” (II, 65), when the
following stanza suddenly introduces new information to the unsuspecting reader: “At last
the dead man walked no more / Amongst the Trial Men, / And I knew that he was standing up
/ In the black dock’s dreadful pen, / And that never would I see his face / In God’s sweet
world again” (II, 61-66). The change between these two stanzas is strikingly abrupt as regards
content, and if it were not for the previous references to the gallows, the reader would not
even be aware of the fact the prisoner is hanged. This withholding of information is also a
literary strategy in postmodernism to reflect the troublesome processing of trauma, mainly
because actual trauma patients often suppress the particular details of the event in order to
avoid the painful process of reliving it (Elsaesser 197). Besides, this literary approach is an
equally useful tool to hold back crucial information of the storyline until the end. From this
perspective, ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ reflects the same kind of suppression of
information and similarly postpones sharing it, since the actual execution is not discussed in-
48
depth until the end of the fourth chapter of the poem. There, the narrator finally manages to
admit that “they hanged him as a beast is hanged: / they did not even toll / A requiem that
might have brought / Rest to his startled soul” (IV, 115-118). What is equally striking about
Wilde’s portrayal of Reading Gaol, is his unification of the prisoners as a whole. The narrator
consistently uses “we” and “us” to describe his feelings of terror and misfortunes, as if they
are collectively shared. The following stanza forms an apt example of the unity of their
actions and the connection of their feelings: “We sewed the sacks, we broke the stone, / We
turned the dusty drill: / We banged the tins, and bawled the hymns, / And sweated on the mill:
/ But in the heart of every man / Terror was lying still” (III, 49-54). The fact that the prisoners
are haunted by the same dreams, fears and traumas creates an atmosphere of solidarity similar
to what was noticeable in the poetry of Bobby Sands.28 It should not come as a surprise that
Wilde felt connected to the prisoners, knowing all too well what they went through after his
own personal experiences. He even mentions this thought, not devoid of his typical wit, in his
motivation for publishing the poem in Reynold’s Magazine. According to Wilde, this is an apt
medium for the first distribution of his poem, “because it circulates widely among the
criminal classes, to which I now belong, for once I will be read by my peers, a new experience
for me” (Kiberd 336). Wilde incorporates the same idea into ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ by
his conscious unification of the prisoners as if they were a body of interconnected souls.
Nonetheless, this perception of collectivity does not always dominate the poetry. Quite
logically, the prisoner does not spend all of his days in the company of other inmates. Wilde
therefore also highlights the moments of individual distress that affect the narrator. Then, the
reader gets a completely different picture of how the prisoners spend their days, “each in his
separate Hell”, where “the silence is more awful far / Than the sound of a brazen bell” (V, 5860). Stanzas like these emphasize how heavily the incarceration experience can weigh when
28
For Sands’s portrayal of solidarity: see p.30.
49
one has to get through on one’s own. The processing of prison trauma, and even more so in
the setting of a Victorian jail cell in the late 1800s, mostly happens on a personal level.
Hence, if the processing happens on an individual level, the consequences of the
prison traumas should differ from prisoner to prisoner as well. Psychological research on
predictors of
prisoners’ distress, for instance, concludes the following: “a prisoner’s
condition […] is determined by variation in what happens during incarceration, in resources
for overcoming and managing the experience, as well as in individual characteristics”
(Hochstetler 437). This statement supports the assumption that the degree of intensity of
prison trauma depends on several factors that vary from prisoner to prisoner. When looking at
‘De Profundis’, it becomes clear that Oscar Wilde at first was one of those prisoners on whom
the incarceration experience weighed heavily:
While I was in Wandsworth prison I longed to die. It was my one desire. When after
two months in the infirmary I was transferred here, and found myself growing
gradually better in physical health, I was filled with rage. I determined to commit
suicide on the very day on which I left prison. (Wilde 7)
Wilde was known as an individualist; his confinement in prison for sodomy and his new
environment with a majority of people with lower intellectual interests contributed to a
profound feeling of isolation. Unlike Bobby Sands, who was literally surrounded by kindred
spirits sharing the same ideology in the cells around him, Wilde was rather on his own. This
feeling of isolation also shimmers in the lines of ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’, for instance in
two consecutive stanzas of the fifth chapter, where the narrator complains that “never a
human voice comes near / To speak a gentle word: / And the eye that watches through the
door / Is pitiless and hard” (V, 61-64).29 The narrator outspokenly longs for human contact
29
There is a striking resemblance between this “eye that watches through the door” (V, 63) and the recurrent Watcher-figure
in Bobby Sands’s poetry (p.8). The feeling of being watched during their imprisonment must have intrigued both poets.
50
and sociability. Instead, the little contact he receives is distant and impersonal. This image of
the isolated prisoner yearning for conversation in fact could correspond with Wilde’s actual
feelings in Reading Gaol. In his Irish Classics, literary critic and Wilde-connoisseur Declan
Kiberd suggests the following:
Solitary confinement was the worst of all punishments. Designed to make offenders
confront the nature of their sin, it was in fact a cynical device to destroy the sense of
camaraderie with fellow inmates. In the prison sick-bay, Wilde so entertained inmates
with quips and stories that a guard was placed by his bed, under strict instructions not
to answer if the prisoner spoke. It was as if the whole process was designed to
disconnect him from all possible audiences. (Kiberd 334-335)
Unable to exercise his typical wit because of his isolation from any potential audience, Wilde
may very well have exclaimed the same complaints as the narrator in his poem; he too must
have felt “degraded and alone” (V, 68). As these two stanzas show, the horror and trauma of
imprisonment also lies in the sudden deprivation of the prisoner’s social status and his
possibilities of social contact. In ‘De Profundis’, Wilde also comes to realize this terrible
power incarceration carries with it: “For I have come […] from a sort of eternity of fame to a
sort of eternity of infamy, and sometimes seem to myself to have shown […] that between the
famous and the infamous there is but one step, if as much as one” (Wilde 6). Because of these
similarities and the close connection with Wilde’s imprisonment in terms of time and content,
it is clear that ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ and ‘De Profundis’ share a lot of opinions about
life in prison.
It should not come as a surprise that every prisoner longs to escape such deplorable
circumstances, and this desire is also reflected in the poem. The highlight of the day in
Reading Gaol, seems to be the walk in the prison’s yard. Wilde’s narrator describes how the
prisoners yearn for “God’s sweet air” (IV, 13). Furthermore, the prisoner awaiting execution
51
in the beginning of the poem, is characterized by his wistful look “upon that little tent of blue
/ which prisoners call the sky” (I, 15-16). Later on, Wilde also applies this wistful gaze at the
sky onto all inmates of Reading in his unification of the prisoners as a whole (IV, 21-22). The
sky, or its rectangular blue representation in the poem, symbolizes the image of freedom for
the prisoners. Through the open air above their heads, they can grasp a portion of nature and
liberty that awaits outside, from the inside. The joy of liberty is also noticeable in the lines
that describe this blue window, because they associate it with images of frivolity. The clouds
that pass by, for example, are referred to as “careless” and “in happy freedom” (I, 23-24).
This small window to the outside even has a curative function for the prisoner in the
beginning of the poem, in his struggle against the sapping environment of Reading Gaol. He
breathes the air “as though it held / Some healthful anodyne” and drinks the sun “as though it
had been wine” (II, 21-24). Therefore, the freedom of nature stands out as a motif of energy
and purity in the poem. In the letter written during his incarceration, Wilde also confirms this
new bond with nature noticeable in the poem: “society, as we have constituted it, will have no
place for me, […] but Nature, whose sweet rains fall on unjust and just alike, will have clefts
in the rocks where I may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence I may weep undisturbed”
(Wilde 24). The traumas of imprisonment caused him to withdraw from society and live as a
hermit, which he eventually did during his exile in France (Ellman 375). Wilde’s personal
appeal to nature, which he developed in prison, is therefore clearly shared by the prisoners in
his poem. Despite the refreshing view on the world outside prison, Wilde subtly indicates that
the experience of freedom and nature is merely a taste for the prisoners in the poem. The idea
of freedom is false because of their imprisonment, and this awareness never ceases to
dominate the poem, even in the aforementioned references to the sky that symbolizes nature.
For instance, in Reading Gaol, the “bars […] hide the stars” of the same sky they daily look
at (III, 77). These bars also “blur the gracious moon, / And blind the goodly sun” (V, 19-20),
52
and therefore it becomes that the joyful image of freedom they perceive is nothing more than
a fake; an idealization. The idea that freedom literally is a couple of yards away, but at the
same time remains intangible, makes it the more painful and traumatic. This thinking path
also helps to explain the wording of the line “beneath the leaden sky” (III, 4), since this
weight could reflect the mental burden prisoners carry by merely looking at it. Wilde
ultimately takes away every illusion in the following stanzas, where he opposes some of the
good that freedom has to offer to the horrible execution by hanging, characterized by his
disarming wit: “It is sweet to dance to violins / When Love and Life are fair: / to dance to
flutes, to dance to lutes / Is delicate and rare: / But it is not sweet with nimble feet / To dance
upon the air!” (II, 49-54). The one action in prison that partly simulates the joy of life as a free
man quite grimly seems to be an execution.
Finally, it is important to mention that Wilde also uses capitalized concepts such as
life, death, justice, lust and humanity in his depiction of Reading Gaol. These are explicit
personifications of abstract themes; they behave as animate beings since they are often
connected to actions such as breathing and swerving or have the ability of possessing human
characteristics like “hands” (I, 8). These personifications can remind the reader of certain
stories from the Bible or for example the medieval morality play Everyman, where abstract
concepts such as Death, Knowledge and Good Deeds also play an animate role as allegorical
representations of their original meanings. This connection is not at all far-fetched after
figuring out that Wilde’s poem is not devoid of any moral bias. Despite his aesthetic poetics,
he still was convinced that “if a work of art is rich and vital and complete, those who have
artistic instincts will see its beauty and those to whom ethics appeal more strongly will see its
moral lesson” (Holland 441). Thus, according to Wilde an explicit moral lesson in the artwork
does not have to repress its beauty in se, as it concerns two different aspects. However, what
exactly is the moral lesson that Oscar Wilde tries to share with his poem, and how does this
53
relate to prison trauma? First of all, it could be a matter of raising the reader’s moral
awareness that the judicial system, which includes the prison procedures, is mildly put
crooked at its core. This early assumption becomes more probable when one looks at the
following excerpt from ‘De Profundis’: “the prison style is absolutely and entirely wrong. I
would give anything to be able to alter it when I go out. I intend to try” (Wilde 20). This
intention of fighting the deplorable circumstances in prison also surfaces in the poem, because
the prison is often described as a faulty institution. Certain stanzas are an equally direct
assault to the justice system; the narrator for example complains “that every Law / That men
have made for Man, […] But straws the wheat and saves the chaff / With a most evil fan” (V,
7-12). In this complaint, Wilde reverses the idiom saving the wheat from the chaff with a
clever pun. Only readers that are familiar with the expression are immediately able to grasp
the meaning behind its use in the poem. While laws were initially introduced with the
intention of bringing the best out in mankind and society, they have quickly reached a stage of
counterproductivity. This results in the deterioration of civilization; without any hesitation
people that do not abide these laws are thrown in jail and left to “rot and rot” (V, 65). The
“most evil fan” from the previously quoted stanza is a reference to the brutality of the prison
regime (V, 12). The fact that “the vilest deeds” bloom “like poison weeds” in prison, and that
“only what is good in Man […] wastes and withers there”, also emphasizes the paradoxical
effect of incarceration (V, 25-28). Locked up in an unsettling environment like Reading Gaol
by force, it is not exactly a surprise that the prisoners have no motivation at all to alter their
behavior. Besides, in ‘De Profundis’ Wilde also remarks that “when the man’s punishment is
over, [society] leaves him to himself; […] it abandons him at the very moment when its
highest duty towards him begins” (Wilde 6). In other words, the prisoner’s punishment
paradoxically seems to start when it is over, because he is confronted with life as a social
pariah. When one compares this statement to the findings of this paragraph, it is safe to say
54
that the poem once again proclaims Wilde’s personal view on imprisonment.
Part of the prison trauma in Wilde’s poem therefore also lies in the narrator’s
understanding that he is locked up in environment full of squalor by order of law, and that noone will publically contest this form of injustice until they know about it. Therefore, the
exposure of the way that a glorious world empire, England’s status in the Victorian age,
treats its own citizens, is an obvious attempt to raise the moral awareness of the reader. Just
like the narrator, the people should realize “that every prison men build / Is built with bricks
of shame”, and that for this reason it is also “bound with bars lest Christ should see / How
men their brothers maim” (V, 15-18). The reader gets the opportunity to take a look at prison
behind the curtain, the way the prisoners know it all too well. From this perspective, the poem
could even subtly reflect the attempts of the authorities to keep their prison policies secretive.
For example, the uniforms of the guards at first sight display neatness and professionalism,
however, they also bear different traces: although “Their uniforms were spick and span, / And
they wore their Sunday suits”, the prisoners “knew the work they had been at / By the
quicklime on their boots” (IV, 51-54). The lime on their boots is connected to another place in
Reading Gaol, which is clarified in the following stanzas, where the narrator describes the
grave of the executed prisoner and “a little heap of burning lime, / That the man should have
his pall” (V, 59-60). While they appear genteel on the surface, these guards in fact have blood
on their hands. Although this is an obvious assault to the staged innocence of the guards, the
narrator partly understands their behavior, as he explains: “for he to whom a watcher’s doom /
Is given as his task, / Must set a lock upon his lips, / And make his face a mask” (III, 27-30).
The governor is characterized by the same misleading camouflage in the poem. Despite his
imposing attire “all in shiny black”, he still has “the yellow face of Doom” (I, 71-72). In a
different stanza, he is also portrayed as the typical gentleman smoking his pipe “twice a day”
and drinking his daily “quart of beer”, while (with the same apathy) he claims to be “glad /
55
The hangman’s hands are near” (III, 19-24). Both the prison staff and the authorities maintain
an image of professionalism and humanity on the outside, a disguise that is exposed behind
the prison walls. The narrator also unmasks this skillfulness in hiding prison procedures in the
following lines: “And they do well to hide their Hell, / For in it things are done / That son of
God nor son of Man / Ever should look upon!” (V, 21-24). The public would know about this
already if the prisoners were allowed to speak, though “none a word may say” (V, 36).
However, not all moral guilt in the poem concerns the prison staff or the responsible
authorities. In order to cope with their punishment and facilitate the trauma processing, the
prisoners should in the first place clear their own conscience. After all, they are criminals who
violated their environment in some way. Quite remarkably, the prisoners in ‘The Ballad of
Reading Gaol’ seem to have this notion of guilt. After the prisoner is executed, they realize
“that, had each got his due / They should have died instead: / He had but killed a thing that
lived / Whilst they had killed the dead. / For he who sins a second time / Wakes a dead soul to
pain” (IV, 27-32). Next confirming that they too have made mistakes, this recognition of
sinning contributes to the prisoners a noble image. This once again underlines their humanity,
which at the same time makes them look more innocent. Wilde’s moral lesson in the poem is
more a case of raising awareness: no man really deserves the injustice of contemporary justice
and the consequent horrors of prison. Furthermore, it is relevant to mention that Wilde’s
personifications could also serve a different purpose than sharing a moral lesson. Because of
these personifications, the presence of the abstract concepts becomes tangible in the poem,
just like it is tangible in the direct environment of the actual prisoners. Other inmates are
executed or nearly starve, so there always is the struggle between life and death. Moreover,
these concepts are often contemplated by the narrator in his criticism on the judicial system,
society and the circumstances in jail. All themes, whether be it Death, Life, Fear or Lust,
56
became such a part of the prison trauma, that they are portrayed as characters that actively
participate in the poem.
3.2.3. Bobby Sands and Oscar Wilde: kindred poets with kindred poetics?
With the previous analysis of Prison Poems and ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ in mind, it
turns out that Bobby Sands writes something strikingly similar to the aforementioned lines
from Wilde’s ‘II, 9’ in ‘The Torture Mill-H-Block’: “To dance and prance to love’s romance /
Is elegant and neat. / To wine and dine on red port wine / Is such a tasty treat, / To eat and sit
where you’ve just shit! / Is not so bloody sweet!” (217-222).30 In both cases, the first four
lines of the stanza contain peaceful and pleasant imagery of freedom. Moreover, the words
“dance” and “love” appear in the same part of the stanza. After these four lines both poets
seem to introduce a volta, which they use to abruptly confront the reader with the harsh reality
of the circumstances in prison, consequently portrayed in the last two lines. Although Wilde
refers to the hanging and Bobby Sands takes the opportunity to describe the poor comfort of
the narrator’s cell, they both use “sweet” to refer to the aforementioned frivolities of life. Next
to this finding, the analysis already revealed certain correspondences between the poetry of
Wilde and Bobby Sands, for instance the metaphoric use of flowers in prison and the
descriptions of haunting hallucinations. Prominent similarities like these could suggest that
Bobby Sands read Wilde’s ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ and at least was inspired by it in
terms of poetics. After investigating this further, the previous assumption becomes even more
probable. Although nothing with actual proof presenting Oscar Wilde as a source of
inspiration for Bobby Sands has yet been written, Sands’s prison diary has something
interesting to show. Written in the first seventeen days of his hunger strike, this document
contains personal reflections in prose on the blanket protest and general prison circumstances.
On March 7 1981, Sands wrote down the following interesting remark:
30
In order to assure oversight: Wilde’s corresponding stanza ‘II, 9’ can be found on p.52.
57
The Screws are staring at me perplexed. Many of them hope (if their eyes tell the
truth) that I will die. If need be, I’ll oblige them, but my God they are fools. Oscar
Wilde did not do justice to them for I believe they are lower than even he thought. And
I may add there is only one thing lower than a Screw and that is a Governor. (Sands 7)
In ‘De Profundis’ and ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’, Oscar Wilde overtly criticizes the
circumstances in prison and the judicial system of his time.31 This explicit reference to Wilde
and the content of the two works that are related to his imprisonment, supports the statement
that Sands had read Wilde’s writings. Wilde, an almost legendary Irish writer, suffered a fate
of incarceration that the Irish rebel Bobby Sands experienced as well. Because of this mutual
imprisonment, he must have considered the works that Oscar Wilde constituted in prison
those of a kindred spirit. From this perspective, the similarities between the poetry of Bobby
Sands and Oscar Wilde, these include the watcher-figure, the recurrent image of the noose
and hanging, the phenomena of temporality and solidarity as regards trauma processing, now
gain extra significance in the broader perspective of this analysis on prison trauma in poetry.32
Generally, these parallels appear in the poetry of Sands and Wilde as logical reactions to
prison trauma, which is a timeless phenomenon, because they are factors typical of an
environment that abuses prisoners. In the light of this new find, however, some of the
similarities could even be considered conscious literary references on Sands’s behalf to reflect
the horrors of prison, because they correspond with the earlier and publically better-known
work of Oscar Wilde ánd they contribute to his credibility as a literary figure. This should not
come as a surprise when knowing that Sands, as much a republican propagandist as a poet,
wanted to reach the largest audience possible in order to fight the circumstances of the IRA
prisoners in Maze. Besides, although his status as a convict accused of terrorism may at first
give a different impression, Sands’s literary knowledge was profound. While incarcerated in
31
32
This criticism is discussed in the section on prison trauma in ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’.
All these similarities have also been clarified in the chapter on prison trauma in ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’.
58
the H-Blocks, for example, he also began reading Marx’s Communist Manifesto and studied
the works of revolutionaries as Ché Guevara and James Connolly (Hanke 20). Moreover, the
analysis of Prison Poems revealed certain references to the poetry of William Wordsworth
and the stories of Edgar Allan Poe that are too accurate to be a mere coincidence. This
combination of arguments make the assumption that Sands’s reproduced certain elements
from Wilde’s poetry the more plausible. Nonetheless, this does not have to harm the truth and
sincerity of Sands’s account of life in Maze prison in Prison Poems per se. As has been
explained in the previous analysis, Bobby Sands without a doubt experienced a rough and
inhumane treatment and not every element in the works of both poets correspond with one
another. Despite his choice for foregrounding certain aspects of prison life in particular and
their remarkable resemblance to Wilde’s poem, his poetry still is characterized by a style of
his own. The prison poetry of Bobby Sands and Oscar Wilde, with its differences in style,
setting, zeitgeist and prison circumstances in general, therefore offers two unique perspectives
on prison trauma.
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4. Lord Byron
Lord Byron, just like Oscar Wilde a flamboyant literary figure, is the third and final writer
whose prison poetry will be tackled. In the light of this analysis on prison trauma, however,
Byron in fact is the odd one out. Although his poem ‘The Prisoner of Chillon’ gives the poetic
reflection of a prisoner in his isolated environment, Byron has never been a prisoner himself.
Nevertheless, this lack of personal incarceration experience should not be regarded as a
disadvantage, since it contributes to three divergent angles on imprisonment in this analysis:
Bobby Sands: the prisoner who never left prison and wrote his poetry on site, Oscar Wilde:
the prisoner who did leave prison and wrote his poem shortly afterwards, and Lord Byron: the
freeman who composes a poem on imprisonment. Therefore, it is safe to say that these three
accounts of prison trauma will only enrich the findings of the analysis and give a broader
picture of the poetic approach on the subject in the nineteenth and twentieth century.
4.1. A different perspective on prison trauma: Byron’s motivation behind ‘The Prisoner
of Chillon’
As was also the case with Oscar Wilde before his incarceration, George Gordon Byron lived a
life of flamboyance and eccentricity. Without any doubt, one of the aspects that contributed to
this popular image, is his fascination for the exotic. This interest for the mystery of what was
foreign and unknown, for example became explicit in his work by his introduction of
orientalism in English poetry, noticeable in tales like ‘The Corsair’ and ‘The Bride of
Abydos’ (Drucker 140-142). An equally prominent manifestation of Byron’s desire for
exploring the unknown is his urge for travelling; an expensive hobby he could nonetheless
afford because of his position as a young aristocrat (Garrett 13). Throughout his life, he
journeyed to Italy and Greece and even spent his last eight years abroad. However, one trip in
particular was an undeniably significant inspiration for ‘The Prisoner of Chillon’, the poem
60
this analysis will focus on. In 1816, Lord Byron traveled through Switzerland in the company
of the fellow Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, with the intention of visiting the places
that are described in the works of Jean Jacques Rousseau. They were on a sailing trip on Lake
Geneva when they stopped to visit the Château de Chillon, a medieval island castle
established near the shore of the lake (Huguenin 66-67). According to the castle’s chronicles,
the duo received an extensive guided tour around the château upon their arrival (Huguenin
68). The castle’s dungeons in particular left an impression on Byron because they were
connected to the story of François Bonivard (Huguenin 68).33 In 1530, the Genevois ecclesiast
Bonivard was imprisoned in these dungeons by the Duke of Savoy for his participation in
patriotic rebellion and undermining his authority. Only six years later he was freed from his
cell by Bernese troops that conquered the castle (Van Amstel 822-825). ‘The Prisoner of
Chillon’ is Byron’s fictional portrayal of Bonivard’s misfortunes in prison, which he
immediately composed within two weeks after his visit to the château. Despite its fourteen
stanzas, the poem is quite lengthy as it counts 392 lines. It is a perfect example of a romantic
verse-tale, a stylistic template which is typical of Byron’s poetry (Ward & Trent 22). These
narrative poems were characterized by their rapid completion, and were composed with two
main intentions on Byron’s behalf: “partly to satisfy the public taste for work of this
character, and partly to wring the poet’s thoughts from reality to imagination” (Ward & Trent
22). This escape to the imaginative can be explained by Byron’s self-imposed exile; a
consequence of public scandals in his home country concerning his bisexuality and the
alleged incestuous relationship with his half-sister (Garrett 25). In 1816, its year of
publication, ‘The Prisoner of Chillon’ was reviewed by for instance Sir Walter Scott and
Francis Jeffrey. Despite its lukewarm reception, the reviews of prominent contemporary
critics, proves that the poem did have its share of attention (Prothero 5-6).
33
A picture of this dungeon, the poem’s setting, is included in appendix: p. 116, image 7.
61
As was mentioned, Byron’s portrayal of prison is not based on personal experiences.
Therefore, his motivation behind dedicating a poem to imprisonment, hence indirectly prison
trauma, is considerably different than that of Bobby Sands and Oscar Wilde. A first aspect
that probably made the story of Bonivard appealing to Byron, is that the abstract content
roughly matches that of his traditional poems. First of all, the protagonist of the poem is an
isolated figure, and is resolute in his struggle against the misfortunes he encounters (Garrett
48). Furthermore, as will be clarified further in the analysis, the purity of nature and liberty
stand out as two important themes in the poem, which is typical of Byron’s Romantic poetics
(Garrett 79). This already proves that Byron’s motivation stems from personal interests as a
poet rather than from personal experience, which was the case with Sands and Wilde. The
subtitle he added to his poem, ‘The Prisoner of Chillon / a fable’ in full, also emphasizes that
this work is the result of a poet exercising his imagination on a certain theme, in this case
long-term imprisonment. This does however not exclude an analysis on prison trauma, since it
is represented frequently in the poem, albeit from a different perspective.
4.2. Prison trauma in Lord Byron’s ‘The Prisoner of Chillon’
Although Lord Byron based his poem on the historical figure of François Bonivard, his
portrayal of the prisoner in the poem is not necessarily truthful. Instead of sticking to the dry
facts, Byron consciously chose to add fictional elements in order to dramatize the traumatic
effect of the narrator’s captivity. In the first stanza, for instance, he confesses that he has
“suffer’d chains and courted death” solely for the sake of his father who “perish’d at the
stake” (11-13). Next to losing his father because of an execution, his family counted six
brothers “who now are one”, which means he is the only one left (17). Two of these brothers
apparently died in battle and he lost another brother at the stake before the last three brothers,
including the narrator, are thrown in prison. Nevertheless, the deaths in the storyline match
certain prosecutions in the conflict in Geneva during Bonivard’s life; there are similarities
62
between the reason that the characters are prosecuted, “For the God their foes denied” (24),
and an actual religious and territorial conflict between Calvinists Protestants and Catholics at
that time (Huguenin 72). In the poem these are however fictional additions that affect the
protagonist, which contributes to a feeling of compassion among the readers. Already in the
first stanza, the reader is aware of the outcome of a terrible process that took years: the
narrator witnessed the slow death of his brothers in the castle’s dungeon, preceded by a period
of prosecution. This immediate sharing of information is an obvious strategy of Byron; later
on in the poem the process is repeated in the narrator’s words “But why delay the truth? – he
died” (144). This literary strategy contributes to the poem a sense of straightforward honesty
and simplicity. Moreover, all the deceased characters are even pictured as innocent martyrs
that were killed out of religious beliefs, which stresses the injustice of their fate, and of the
horrors the narrator subsequently experiences in the dungeon.
The distress of the narrator in ‘The Prisoner of Chillon’ is caused by several features
of the jail cell in which he is confined. In the second stanza, it is described as a “deep and old”
dungeon “below the surface of the lake”, hemmed by a “thick wall” and “massy and grey”
columns with chains that restrain the three brothers (28-33). This representation provides an
image of utter isolation which the poem also reflects in the scarce appearances of the
“keepers”, the ones responsible for guarding the prisoners (301). They only appear two times
in the dungeons, with the sole purpose of unchaining the brother’s body and burying it, as
well as removing the narrator’s chain near the end. Next to the nearly non-existent interaction
with the guards, Byron’s associations of the dungeon with impenetrable objects or areas
enhance the image of isolation. The prison is for example compared to a “dark vault” (116),
or even “a living grave” (114). The dungeon’s ghastly atmosphere eventually becomes so
tangible for the three prisoners, that some of its features are passed on to them. In the third
stanza, the narrator first perceives that their “voices took a dreary tone, / An echo of the
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dungeon stone” and that these voices did not even sound “like [their] own” (63-68). Later on,
he even admits that he felt a stone “among the stones” (236). This unification of the prisoners
with their environment reveals the plausible effect of long-term imprisonment in the same
enclosed environment, to such an extent that the prisoners become a part of it. More than
Sands and Wilde did, Byron puts an emphasis on the loneliness of the prisoners by exploiting
the familiar image of a remote medieval dungeon; a frequently used image in Romanticism.
Already then, it intrigued readers as it reminded of mysterious and ghastly events in the dark
Middle Ages (Huguenin 67-68).
This sense of isolation is not solely enlarged by the setting of the poem, though; Byron
also pays attention to the psychological impact it has on the narrator. The isolation becomes
truly horrifying when the protagonist realizes he is all alone after losing his last brother. When
he rushes to him, he “found him not”, a symbolical line that connects the idea of losing the
soul to an unreal physical vanishing of the body (211). From this perspective, nothing of a
person is left after the soul leaves the body, which merely functions as its container. Perhaps
this twist in plot could allude to the physical weakness long-term imprisonment can cause; the
brother’s body, next to his lust for life, slowly faded away when alive until eventually nothing
remained. Consequently, the narrator’s understanding that he is the only one left to suffer,
leads to deep despair, expressed in the poem by a series emotional exclamations: “I only
stirred in this black spot, / I only lived, I only drew / The accursed breath of dungeon dew”
(212-214). The narrator’s last connection with humanity is lost along with his brother and he
realizes that it “was broken in this fatal place” (218), which makes this scene of recognition
one of the most dramatic in the poem. Moreover, the narrator is not only isolated in space, but
also in time. He has no clue of what is going on outside, which makes his cell appear as a
vacuum in time from where he has “not seen the sun so rise / For years” (43-44). The narrator
even lost count of the exact amount of years, “I cannot count them o’er / I lost their long and
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heavy score” (44-45). The final stanza of Byron’s poem starts with the same distorted
temporality that also characterized certain passages in Wilde’s poem: “It might be months, or
years, or days- I kept no count, I took no note- no count on time” (366-367).34 If there is no
possibility of keeping track of time, there eventually is no need for it either. Time, an
intrinsically human phenomenon, can only be effectively put to use in social contexts, for
example, its purpose for setting up exact meetings or appointments. For the isolated narrator
in Chillon castle, however, the values of time have become superfluous.
Next to the strong sense of isolation, another aspect typical of imprisonment is
intensified in Lord Byron’s poem. While the physical restriction of the prisoners in the poetry
of Sands and Wilde was caused by cramped cells and the prison walls, the space accessible to
the prisoner of Chillon is even more limited. As he describes in the beginning of the poem,
the narrator is chained up to one of the columns of the dungeon. This chain is “a cankering
thing” that leaves an ineradicable mark on the prisoner, as he claims that “in these limbs its
teeth remain” (38-39). The shackles do not only prevent him from any physical exercise in the
dungeon and impede his view on the outside, they also hinder the communication with his
brothers. First of all, the three prisoners can “not move a single pace” and can “not see
eachother’s face” (50-51). Luckily, this does not entirely eradicate the possibility of verbal
interaction: “’twas still some solace in the dearth […] To hearken to each other’s speech, /
And each turn comforter to each / With some new hope, or legend old, / Or song heroically
bold” (56-61). The human interaction, still present in the beginning of the poem, functions as
a sort of anesthetic that softens the pain and trauma of prison. Cuffs do not keep hold of words
of hope or comfort, or stories that can serve as a welcome distraction. The clash between the
spatial limitation of the brothers and the possibilities of communication is distinctively
represented in the paradoxical lines “And thus together – yet apart, / Fettered in hand, but
34
For the paragraph on temporality in ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’: p. 40-41.
65
joined in heart” (54-55). Nevertheless, the comfort of other voices does not seem to erase
every problem as soon as it becomes clear that “even these at length grew cold” under the
burden of their imprisonment (62). Furthermore, the narrator’s brother is described as a man
“strong in his frame” (94) who “perish’d in the foremost rank / With joy” during battle (9697). Chained up in prison however, “his spirit wither’d with their clank” until he eventually
passes away (98). The description of the chain’s restraining function reaches its climax when
the narrator watches his first brother die and is unable to help him. When reliving the event,
he realizes: “I saw, and could not hold his head, / Nor reach his dying hand -nor dead,- /
Though hard I strove, but strove in vain, / To rend and gnash my bonds in twain” (145-58). In
other words, the powerless position of the narrator is caused by the chains that restrict him
from helping out his brother. At the end of an earlier stanza in the poem, there is a dramatic
contrast of life and death in a prison setting that connects the chain to the narrator’s deceased
brother : “when my last brother droop’d and died, / And I lay living by his side” (46-47). This
means two significant aspects of imprisonment, isolation and restriction, are directly
connected to the death of two characters in the poem. This connection contributes to the
significance of their function in the manifestation of prison trauma in Byron’s poem.
Moreover, the narrator’s relief after being released from his chain also proves its depressing
effect. How paradoxical it may without a doubt sound, he even considers it a sort of “liberty
to stride / Along [his] cell from side to side” (306-307). A final interesting aspect related to
this element in particular, is the unclear motivation of the guardsmen to remove the prisoner’s
chain. According to the narrator this seemingly empathic concession has nothing to do with
actual compassion on their behalf, since they are “inured to sights of woe” (303). Rather than
letting the guards expose a whiff of humanity, Byron’s actual goal behind this sudden shift in
plot is to enable the narrator’s depiction of the landscape through the barred window of his
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cell in the following stanzas.35 Byron therefore bends the story and gives it an illogical, even
unrealistic touch to allow certain deviations on the prison theme. The same happens when the
narrator’s last brother dies, and he suddenly manages to burst his chain “with one strong
bound”, while he previously was unable to (210). It immediately becomes clear that this
moment of unrealistic strength was necessary to allow the narrator to rush to his brother and
exclaim that he is the only one left in prison: a moment of intensified emotion. This strategy
of deviation varies from the approach of Bobby Sands and Oscar Wilde, who both wrote their
poetry dedicated to the vices of prison, and attempted to make the content of their poems as
balanced and logical as possible in order to achieve a realistic portrayal.
Nevertheless, this does not necessarily imply that the horrors of Byron’s prison come
across as phoney or plastic. On the contrary, there is a lot of attention for the intense
description of emotions and the feelings often seem all too recognizable. In Suspended
Judgments, a collection of literary essays, influential British novelist and lecturer John
Cowper Powys connects this characteristic intensification of emotions to the image of Byron:
“It is simply the intensification, to a point of fine poetic fury, of emotions and attitudes and
gestures which we all share under the pressure of spirit youth” (Powys 279). He even
considered this intensification of familiar emotions the key of Byron’s success:
He would never have become all this; he would never have stirred the fancy of the
masses of people as he has; if there were not in his temperament something essentially
simple, human, and within the comprehension of quite ordinary minds. (Powys 80)
From this perspective, Byron’s poem can also be understood as an accessible literary work on
prison and its traumas; work that practically every reader of his time could easily process and
digest. Bobby Sands’s and Wilde’s poetry demands of the reader a certain degree of social
insight and mental exercise in order to fully grasp the poetry’s sense and criticism. Byron’s
35
In the poem, this concerns the lines 334-355.
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account on prison trauma is rather dominated by the portrayal of emotions in his typical
Romantic way and far less confronting by its situation in a long gone past. Cowper Powys’s
only comparison between the poetics of Wilde and Byron corresponds with this opinion at its
core: “It might indeed be maintained that what Oscar Wilde is to the rare and more perverse
minority, Byron is to the solid majority of downright simple philistines” (Powys 279). Despite
the fact that this statement is quite radically formulated, and not entirely uncontroversial, its
core still contains some truth. It is plausible that Lord Byron is the poet in this analysis whose
prison poetry could most appeal to the broader public, by, for example, its aforementioned
focus on recognizable emotions and fictional setting. Nevertheless, the reader of his poem
does get a vivid impression of the possible horrors of prison that should not be regarded as
inferior, but simply as different. The general atmosphere of chaos for instance, becomes truly
tangible in the poem when the narrator realizes his brother is dying:
And then the sighs he would suppress
Of fainting nature’s feebleness,
More slowly drawn, grew less and less.
I listen’d, but I could not hear I call’d, for I was wild with fear;
I knew ‘t was hopeless, but my dread
Would not be thus admonishèd.
I call’d, and thought I heard a sound . (202-209)
This is a striking example of Byron’s skillfulness in bundling an abundance of emotions into a
compact amount of lines. The slow death of his brother, a process that likely took years, is
depicted in the first three lines of the excerpt. In terms of form these lines slowly come to a
stop as well; from a relatively long first line to a shorter second one, and ultimately a line that
is broken in two by a comma and ends on a dot that stimulates the reader to pause (202-204).
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The poem’s formal cadence can at the same time be corresponding with the brother’s fading
breath that steadily comes to a standstill. The brother’s dimming struggle equally speaks from
the deeper content of this part, for instance reflected by the last words of each line. At first,
his resistance is still reflected in the active verb “suppress”, while the second line already
admits his “feebleness” (202-203). Finally, his slow decline is confirmed by “less and less”
(204). This section is followed by five lines that sketch the narrator’s state of distress,
confusion, and panic following the death (205-209). The repetition of the “I” performing an
action, followed by extra information already reflects his panicky and hasty response.
Moreover, when taking notice of the verb meanings, they respectively refer to a part of the
mental process of communication. First the narrator listens, then he calls, and lastly he knows.
The combination of these verbs show the chaos of how the approaching death of his brother
causes the narrator to do every action he possibly can in order to prevent it. The sequence of
these verbs is ultimately mixed in the final line “I call’d, and thought I heard a sound” (209).
After this observation, he finally takes the step to break his chain and rush towards his brother
(210). The excerpt, despite its modest eight lines, can from this perspective be regarded as an
extensive summary of emotions and actions connected to a singular event in prison. When one
reads the lines with great attention and looks beyond, the scene depicted is characterized by
the drama of trauma, expressed in both content and form. The horror of a slow death is also
described in detail when the narrator thinks of how his father died: “He, too, was struck, and
day by day / Was withered on the stalk away. / Oh, God! It is a fearful thing / To see the
human soul take wing / In any shape, in any mood” (174-175). Because of Byron’s outspoken
fascination for his descriptions of death, as displayed in the excerpt, Goethe even suspected
that he was guilty of a venial murder (Prothero 25). What can probably serve as a better
explanation for the narrator’s attention for slow death, is simply that he is in the same
situation of long-term captivity and subjected to the same degeneration process. Therefore,
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the fate of the prosecuted brothers and father could equally be his.
It is no surprise, then, that the narrator bends under the burden of the atrocities he
experiences in prison. He confesses, for instance, to be glad that there is “no partner in [his]
misery”, because the “thought of them had made [him] mad” (325-328). His words are even
grimmer when he admits that he “could have smiled to see / The death that would have set
[him] free” (124-125). This urge to die and escape his troublesome circumstances is however
inconsistent, because it is also opposed to sparks of faith in the poem. “I know not why / I
could not die”, he contemplates, “I had no earthly hope-but faith, / And that forbade a selfish
death” (227-230). Overall, the narrator’s view on death has striking resemblances with the
philosophy of the narrator in ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’. When his first brother dies, for
example, the narrator tries to convince the guards to lay “his corse in dust whereon the day /
Might shine” (153-154). At first, he considers this a strange thought, but then concludes “That
even in death his freeborn breast / In such dungeon could not rest”(156-157). The notion that
a prisoner can remain imprisoned in the afterlife, especially when buried within the prison
walls, is therefore also reflected in Byron’s poem.36 When comparing the poems of Byron and
Wilde, another remarkable parallel stands out. In ‘De Profundis’, Wilde realized that he
would just be moving from one jail into another upon his release, a thought that was also
expressed in his poem by the frequently recurring motif of fetters. The following lines from
‘The Prisoner Of Chillon’ convey a similar message: “For I had buried one and all, / Who
loved me in a human shape; / And the whole earth would henceforth be / A wider prison unto
me” (320-323). After the extinction of his family members, he realizes he will never
understand the joy of life anymore. The traumas of Chillon will forever haunt him, which at
the same time means he will never be entirely free.
36
For the resembling paragraph on the narrator of ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’: see p.44.
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On a different note, one more interesting psychological phenomenon can be added to
this study’s expanding list of elements that correspond with prison trauma. Earlier
comparative research on the poetry of Byron and Keats, concludes that Byron “resorts
occasionally to synaesthesia to convey a vague, ill-defined, or even hallucinatory mood” (De
Ullman 822). Synesthesia can be defined as a neurological disorder in which the stimulation
of one sensory organ causes automatic experiences in a second sensory organ; a unification of
the senses as it were (Cytowic 5). Consequently, it is ‘The Prisoner Of Chillon’ that serves as
an example in the aforementioned literary study on Byron. The synesthesia is reflected in the
lines “A light broke in upon my brain, / It was the carol of a bird” (251-252) and “when I did
descend again, / The darkness of my dim abode / Fell on me as a heavy load” (359-361).
Byron indeed interweaves the senses in both examples: the sound of a bird triggers a visual
perception, while the darkness stimulates the narrator’s sense of touch. Although there is an
array of subdivisions for synesthesia, suffice it to say that psychological research has proven
that the symptom in general can be connected to posttraumatic stress. As means of
clarification, a study on 700 war veterans who “had served at least one warzone deployment”
concludes that “synesthesia seems to be associated with PTSD among veterans who had been
deployed. This finding may have implications for PTSD diagnostic screening and treatment”
(Hoffman et al 882-885). Although Lord Byron naturally did not intend this reference to
trauma theory, it can be considered another legitimate representation of prison trauma
interpreted from the poem, which is the aim of this analysis. The mood this mixed perception
causes indeed has a lot in common with hallucinations and panic attacks, known to be two
other PTSD symptoms, since the narrator describes “the loss of light, and air, / And then of
darkness too” in the stanza before he notices the bird’s song. He is pulled into a state of
“vacancy absorbing space” (243), a mental environment with “no stars, no earth, no time, / No
check, no change, no good, no crime, / But silence, and a stirless breath / Which neither was
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of life nor death; / A sea of stagnant idleness, / Blind, boundless, mute and motionless!” (245250). The narrator experiences an intensified hallucination that is depicted as a dimension
alien to this world and its physical concepts. Moreover, the final line of the excerpt
emphasizes his paralyzed senses (250), until the bird eventually triggers the narrator’s sight
and hearing with his song. Furthermore, the fact that the hallucination and synesthesia happen
in Chillon’s dungeon raises the assumption that these phenomena are caused by the traumatic
experiences of the narrator in prison. After all, it is also “the darkness of [his] dim abode”, in
other words the ghastly environment of his dungeon, that becomes tangible for the narrator in
the second given example of synesthesia (360).
Another relevant finding of the analysis concerns the stylistic approach of Lord Byron
in his poem, because he incorporates the account of the prisoner in a dramatic monologue
(Rutherford 66). This typically Romantic poetic form is distinguished by three main aspects in
the literary criticism of M.H. Abrams. First of all, the narrative is told by one person that is
not the poet. Consequently, this narrator is addressing an audience, but the presence of these
auditors is only noticeable in the references the narrator makes, Byron’s monologue, for
example, is a retrospective story told to an imaginary audience. Lastly, the reader is able to
obtain a vivid image of the narrator’s character and temperament through his speech (Abrams
70-71). Because it enables a detailed and up-close depiction of the narrator’s psyche, the
dramatic monologue is also a useful tool to portray the psychological impact of prison trauma.
When looking at the poems of Bobby Sands and Oscar Wilde in this analysis, it becomes clear
that they also apply the dramatic monologue to some extent. Although in Sands’s case the line
between narrator and poet is sometimes blurry, the narrator’s frequent interjections aimed at
the reader, for example, show that he clearly addresses an audience.37 Moreover, the strong
republican bias of Prison Poems gives the narrator the image of an ardent Irishman fighting
37
“Depression, friend, it did extend / In waves through every cell” (‘The Torture Mill-H-Block’ 85-88)
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for his freedom under the thumb of a distorted prison regime. Despite the fact that Wilde’s
narrator shares a lot of features with his creator, a clear distinction still remains. The
narrator’s retrospective criticism on the circumstances in Reading Gaol and society in general
is equally aimed at convincing possible listeners.38 Finally, his character of an empathic and
observing intellectual in prison is thoroughly developed in the poem as well. This
corresponding comparison of the poems with the aspects of the dramatic monologue proves
that all three poets, to some extent, make use of it in order to convey their image of prison
and its trauma.
4.3. Prison trauma as a vessel for Byron’s Romantic poetics?
Finally, it is clear that Byron assigns an important role to nature in his poem. Whenever it
appears, its liberty and purity form a stark contrast with the horrors of prison. After the
narrator is released from his chain, he makes “a footing in the wall” to be able to look outside
(318). The description that follows next is a perfect example of the poet celebrating nature, a
phenomenon typical of Romanticism (Hunt 296). Unlike the narrator, aged by his
imprisonment, the mountains outside his window “were not changed […] in frame” (333):
I saw their thousand years of snow
On high-their wide long lake below,
And the blue Rhone in fullest flow;
I heard the torrents leap and gush
O’er channell’d rock and broken bush;
[…]
The fish swam by the castle wall,
And they seem’d joyous each and all;
38
“And all men kill the thing they love, / By all let this be heard” (‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ VI, 13-14).
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The eagle rode the rising blast,
Methought he never flew so fast
As then to me he seem’d to fly.
(334-355)
In this scene, the majesty of nature is described as a powerful and vivid entity that is very
peaceful at the same time. Consequently, all this visual beauty is explicitly opposed to the
narrator’s depleting environment when he descends to his cell again. The area feels like a
“new-dug grave, / Closing o’er one we sought to save” (362-363). What can also be
connected to the motif of nature and its contrast to prison, is the recurrent appearance of a bird
in the poem. Next to the “eagle” from the previous excerpt (353), the bird re-appears in the
narrator’s dungeon. With great awe, he considers it “A visitant from Paradise” (284), because
he “sometimes deemed that it might be / [his] brother’s soul come down to [him]” (288). The
brother in question is already associated with birds in the second stanza, when the narrator
mentions their father would be distressed “to see such bird in such a nest”, “for he was
beautiful as day / (When day was beautiful to me / As to young eagles, being free)” (78-81).
The narrator’s youngest brother stands out as an empathic, vivid and innocent young man
because of his comparison to birds and nature in general, which makes his death all the more
tragic. The comparison of prisoners and birds is nothing new when looking at the tradition of
Romanticism. According to Clair Legette, a researcher of the University of Georgia
specialized in Romantic Literature, “nineteenth-century depictions of the solitary poet often
rely on the longstanding figurative pairing of birds and prisoners”, because this comparison
has a significant underlying meaning (Legette 22). Birds and prisoners are “twin figures for
the poet. The idealized prisoner offers perfect isolation, while the vision of the bird offers a
free-wheeling independence” (Legette 22). Moreover, this statement tallies with an excerpt
from Percy Shelley’s “A Defence of Poetry”:
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A poet is a Nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with
sweet sounds; his auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician,
who feel that they are moved and softened, yet know not whence or why (Shelley
486).
From this perspective, Lord Byron is merely using the prison setting and the traumas in the
excerpt to convey a deeper image of the isolated poet and his free imagination in a typically
Romantic way. This interpretation also clarifies why “the carol of a bird” wakes the prisoner
from his aforementioned state of mental delusion, as it equally symbolizes the powerful effect
of liberty that sprouts from the isolation of the poet (252). Hence, this Romantic escapism is
more intensified than the forms of escapism that appeared in the poetry of Sands and Wilde.
While their escapism rather is a longing for physical freedom and tranquility as opposed to the
horrors of prison, Byron’s portrayal of nature’s beauty subtly is more poetically motivated.
Finally, the fact that Byron often follows the conventions of Romanticism is also noticeable in
the wording of ‘The Prisoner Of Chillon’. There for instance is a striking resemblance
between the lines “And truly might it be distressed / To see such bird in such a nest” (76-77)
and “Thou tree of covert and of rest / for this young Bird that is distrest” (Wordsworth 98-99);
lines from William Wordsworth’s poem ‘Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle’. The same
goes for “Lone-as a solitary cloud” (294) and Wordsworth’s famous poem ‘I Wandered
Lonely as a Cloud’. Byron’s poem even contains a reference to another Lake Poet, Samuel
Taylor Coleridge, in the line “I could not die” (228). It is as good as identical to the line from
his reputed poem ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, where the narrator states “And yet I
could not die” (Coleridge IV, 262). These similarities did not go unnoticed by the
contemporary critics as well. As the following commentary aptly shows, they did not really
consider Byron’s poem refreshing:
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He could not […] carry many volumes on his tour, but among the few […] are found
the two volumes of poems lately republished by Mr. Wordsworth […] to whose
system Lord Byron […] has become a tardy convert, and of whose merits in the poems
on our table we have a silent but unequivocal acknowledgement. (Prothero 27)
In this regard, the content of Byron’s poem is more of a confirmation of, and a connection to,
Romantic tradition. Despite the omnipresence of prison trauma in the poem and its interesting
representation, the reader should therefore -next to enjoying
its vivid and intensified
portrayal-always be mindful of Byron’s motivation underneath. The narrator, a social exile in
his isolation and a fighter of his fate perceptive of his own sentiments, can be considered a
Byronic hero adopted to the horrifying setting of a medieval prison (Hunt 55).
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5. Conclusion
First and foremost, the diversity of the findings in this research points out that the poetry of
Bobby Sands, Oscar Wilde and Lord Byron offers three unique accounts on prison trauma.
Not only do they differ on the scale of time and location, their poetry also presents different
perspectives and commentary on imprisonment. Bobby Sands’s Prison Poems, the largest
work tackled in my analysis, is characterized by the Irish Republican spirit of a blanket
protestor oppressed by a harsh prison regime under the Northern Irish criminalization
programme during the 1970s and 1980s. The poetry’s descriptions of the daunting physical
violence of the interrogations, the deplorable circumstances in prison and the staff’s
meticulous techniques for breaking a prisoner’s will, allow an array of insights on prison
trauma. Several aspects of his poems displayed striking similarities with psychological trauma
theory on Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, dissociation, Emotional Numbing, victimization,
isolation, shell shock and hallucinations. Although these are mostly no conscious references
made by Sands, they do give an enriching underlying image of what troubled the psyche of
the blanket protestors under the burden of oppression, which contributed to an
interdisciplinary reading of the poems. Moreover, Prison Poems also gives an image between
the lines of both the grim and heart-warming ways in which the, physically as well as
mentally, nude prisoners tried to alleviate the effects of prison trauma. The narrator and his
fellow blanket protestors manage to live through each day by clinging to several individual
and collective “life rafts” (‘The Crime of Castlereagh’ 192). These include the ideals of
Catholicism, Irish republicanism, Romantic escapism and the solidarity among “comrades in
the dark”, as well as rather trivial pleasures like the joy of smoking a cigarette (‘Comrades in
the Dark’ 1). Even the poetry collection itself can be considered a form of collective trauma
processing since it was recited to the prisoners as a confirmation of their just cause and their
horrifying abuse in prison. Next to this, Sands endeavoured to connect his poetry with the
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tradition of Irish republican rebel songs, both stylistically and in terms of content. Finally, the
analysis also revealed certain connections with the work of Edgar Allan Poe and William
Wordsworth.
Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ already differs from Sands’s account
because it was written shortly after, and not during, Wilde’s personal prison experiences.
Characterized by his typical wit, the narrator criticizes the crooked judicial system and the
general circumstances of imprisonment and society in general of England of the Victorian era.
Wilde’s poem, focusing on
prisoner executions and prison circumstances, has a more
pessimistic impact because it sketches the contemplations of a prisoner that will remain
imprisoned after his release and even in the afterlife. Despite the clear distance between
narrator and poet, several excerpts from ‘De Profundis’ have shown striking parallels in their
attitude. Furthermore, his poetry showed links to psychological phenomena such as Emotional
Numbing, trauma-related nightmares and PTSD. It also incorporates the cross-disciplinary
idea of temporality, which is a typically postmodern strategy next to a factor in trauma
studies. Although Wilde puts the crime of the executed prisoner in perspective, he does
emphasize that the prisoners are sinners and that they should be aware of this moral guilt. The
moral bias of his poem is unmistakable in the metaphorical use of abstract concepts such as
life, death, lust and fear, in order to raise moral awareness.
Finally, Lord Byron’s ‘The Prisoner of Chillon’ is the result of a freeman composing a
poem on imprisonment and thus exposes prison trauma from a whole different perspective.
His chiefly poetic motivation behind the poem is proven by its outspoken fictional nature and
a series of aspects that can be linked to the conventions of Romanticism; for instance
noticeable in the motifs of liberty, nature, a medieval setting and similarities in wording with
the Lake Poets. Nonetheless, he offers an equally interesting account on prison trauma with a
focus on emotional intensification and dramatization of the circumstances of incarceration.
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Moreover, his conscious use of synaesthesia can be linked to its appearance as a symptom of
trauma processing. Despite Byron’s vivid sketch of prison trauma, the reader should
nevertheless be mindful of its incorporation in the broader structure of a conventional
Romantic poem.
Next to this array of differences, the comparative analysis of the poetry revealed a
surprising amount of parallels. Although nothing with actual proof presenting Oscar Wilde as
a source of inspiration for Bobby Sands has yet been written, both works contain
resemblances that are too explicit to neglect. First of all, Sands’s poetry reminds of Wilde’s
‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ because of the similarities in wording and certain stanzas. Other
correspondences include the motif of the watcher-figure, the recurrent image of the noose and
hanging, and the phenomena of temporality and solidarity as regards trauma processing. Both
poets even metaphorically portray the prisoners as flowers withering in prison. In the light of
these new findings, some of these similarities could even be considered conscious literary
approaches on Sands’s behalf to reflect the horrors of prison, because they correspond with
the earlier and publically better-known work of Oscar Wilde ánd they contribute to his
credibility as a literary figure. This should not come as a surprise when knowing that Sands,
as much a republican propagandist as a poet, wanted to reach the largest audience possible in
order to fight the circumstances of the IRA prisoners in Maze (Hanke 20). Sands’s explicit
singular reference to Wilde in his prison diary can serve as an extra convincing argument.
Moreover, the analysis of Byron’s poem pointed out even more of these parallels. A
comparison with the literary theory of M.H. Abrams proved that all three poets, to some
extent, make use of the dramatic monologue to convey their image of prison and prison
trauma. Furthermore, they also make use of Romantic escapism to contrast the purity of
nature with the filth of prison. Sands, Wilde and Byron are equally unanimous in their
emphasis on the concepts of isolation and temporality caused by imprisonment. Lastly, both
79
Sands and Byron converted certain lines from William Wordsworth’s poetry, while Byron and
Wilde’s narrators share the idea that a prisoner remains forever imprisoned.
To conclude, my analysis could even go as far as suggesting a literary continuum of
prison trauma in poetry from the early nineteenth to the late twentieth century because of
these remarkable parallels, at least in the studied works of these three poets. While their
respective portrayal of prison trauma remains distinct, the poetry has too much in common to
consider it a mere coincidence. Nevertheless, this suggested continuum rather appears to be an
assembly of conscious and unconscious similarities than an outspoken connection to
preceding poets. The mutual parallels however cannot be denied, which makes the broader
view on prison trauma obtained from this analysis all the more interesting. Moreover, the
collected findings of this thesis could prove themselves interesting starting points for future
analysis of the poetic connection between Bobby Sands and Oscar Wilde, or the general
continuum of prison trauma in poetry.
80
6. Cited Works
Print
Abrams, M.H. A Glossary of Literary Terms. 8th ed. Boston: Thomson Wadsworth, 2005.
Bartlett, Thomas. The 1798 Rebellion: An Illustrated History. Lanham: Roberts Rineheart
Publishers , 1998.
Beresford, David. Ten Men Dead: The Story of the 1981 Irish Hunger Strike. London:
Hammersmith, 1987.
Cytowic, Richard. Synesthesia: A Union of the Senses. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Mitt Press,
2000.
De Ullman, Stephen. “Romanticism and Synaesthesia: A Comparative Study of Sense
Transfer in Ketas and Byron”. PMLA 60.3., 1945. 811-827.
Dooley, Enda. “Prison suicide in England and Wales, 1972-87”. British Journal of Psychiatry
156., 1990. 40-45.
Drucker, Peter. “Byron and Ottoman love: Orientalism, Europeanization and same sex
sexualities in the ear nineteenth-century Levant”. Journal of European Studies 42.2.,
2012. 140-157.
Elsaesser, Thomas. “Postmodernism as mourning work”. Screen 42.2., 2001. 193-200.
Feeny, Norah et al. “Exploring the Roles of Emotional Numbing, Depression, and
Dissociation in PTSD”. Journal of Traumatic Stress 13.3., 2000. 489-498.
Garrett, Martin. George Gordon, Lord Byron. London: British Library, 2000.
Hanke, Philip. Bobby Sands – An Irish Martyr? Munich: GRIN Verlag, 2011.
81
Hochstetler, Andy. “Damaged Goods: Exploring Predictors of Distress in Prison Inmates”.
Crime & Delinquency 50.3., 2004. 436-457.
Hoffman, Stuart et al. ‘Grapheme-Color Synesthesia and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder:
Preliminary Results From the Veterans health Study’. Psychosomatic Medicine 74.9. ,
2012. 879-989.
Holland, Merlin. The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde. New York: Henry Holt & Co, 2000.
Kiberd, Declan. Irish Classics. London: Granta, 2000.
Legette, Casie. “The Lyric Speaker Goes to Gaol: British Poetry and Radical Prisoners 18201845.” Nineteenth-Century Literature 61.1., 2012. 1-28.
Leth, Peter. “Homicidal hanging masquerading as suicide” Forensic Science International,
85.1., 1997. 65-71.
Litz, Brett et al. “Predictors of Emotional Numbing in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder”. Journal
of Traumatic Stress 10.4., 1997. 607-617.
MacLeod, A.D. ‘Shell shock, Gordon Holmes and the Great War’. Journal of the Royal
Society of Medicine 97.2., 2004. 86-89.
Mather, Ronald & Marsden, Jill. “Trauma and Temporality: On the Origins of PostTraumatic Stress”. Theory Psychology 14.2., 2004. 205-219.
Mellman, Thomas et al. “Dreams in the Acute Aftermath of Trauma and Their Relationship
to PTSD”. Journal of Traumatic Stress 14.1., 2001. 241-247.
Moen, Declan. “Irish Political Prisoners and Post Hunger-Strike Resistance to
Criminalisation”. The British Criminology Conference: Selected Proceedings 1.3.,
1999. 1-20.
82
Morrison, Danny. Then The Wall Came Down: A Prison Journal. Cork: Mercier Press, 1999.
Ross, Robert. ‘Preface to De Profundis, by Oscar Wilde’. London: Methuen, 1912.
Rutherford, Andrew. Byron: A Critical Study. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1961.
Sampson, Anthony. Mandela: The Authorised Biography. London: HarperCollins, 1999.
Sands, Bobby. Prison Poems. Dublin: Sinn Féin Publicity Department, 2000.
Taylor,
Peter.
Provos:
The
IRA
and
Sinn
Féin.
London:
Bloomsbury,
1998.
Van Amstel, Adrienne. “The True Story of the Prisoner of Chillon”. In James Knowles. The
Nineteenth Century; A Montly Review. London: Marston & Company. 821-829.
Van Vuuren, Helize. “Labyrinth of Loneliness: Breyten Breytenbach’s prison poetry (19761985). Tydskrif Vir Letterkunde 46.2., 2009. 43-56.
Wordsworth, William. “Preface to Lyrical Ballads ” 1802. The Norton Anthology of English
Literature, Ed. M.H. Abrams and Stephen Greenblatt. New York: W.W. Norton &
Company, 2006. 263-274.
83
Web
‘A Nation Once Again – Dream of freedom’. Irish Music Daily. Consulted 5 Apr. 2014 at:
http://www.irishmusicdaily.com/a-nation-once-again
“British Government holds back documents on 1981 Hunger Strike”. An Phoblacht, Apr. 9
2009. Consulted 11 Mar. 2014 at: http://www.anphoblacht.com/contents/19921
Byron, George Gordon. ‘The Prisoner of Chillon’. The Poetry Foundation. Consulted at 1
Mar. 2014 at: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173098
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’. The Poetry Foundation.
Consulted 12 May 2014 at: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173253
Ellman, Richard. Oscar Wilde. London: Vintage Books, 1988. eBook.
Gil, J. “Gethsemane: the Agony in the Garden and the Prayer of Jesus”. Jose Maria Escriva.
Consulted 2 Apr. 2014 at: www.josemariaescriva.info
Huguenin, Claire. A walk around the Castle of Chillon. Fondation du Château de Chillon,
2008. eBook.
Hunt, Leigh. Lord Byron and some of his contemporains, Volume 1. 1828. eBook.
‘Irish song voted world’s favourite.’ BBC News Channel. Consulted 5
Apr. 2014 at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/2591357.stm
Lifton, Robert Jay. “The American Way of War”. The Huffington Post. Consulted 24 May
2014at:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-jay-lifton/war-atrocity_b_1490147.html
Owen, Wildred. ‘Mental Cases’. The First World War Digital Poetry Archive. Consulted 25
May 2014 at: www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/education/tutorials/intro/owen/mental.html
84
Owen, Wildred. ‘Preface to Edition’. The First World War Digital Poetry Archive.
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http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/education/tutorials/intro/owen/preface.html
Powyss, John Cowper. Suspended Judgments: Essays on Books and Sensations. Project
Gutenberg. Consulted 27 Feb. 2014 at: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/27163/27163h/27163-h.htm
Prothero, Rowland. The Works of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1. Acterna, 2004.
Ward & Trent. “The Verse-tales. II. Byron”. The Cambridge History of English and
American Literature. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1921. eBook. Bartleby.
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Wilde, Oscar. ‘De Profundis’. Project Gutenberg. Consulted 14 Mar. 2014 at:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/921/921-h/921-h.htm
Wilde, Oscar. ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’. Project Gutenberg. Consulted 13 Mar. 2014 at:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/301/301-h/301-h.htm
Willoughby, Guy. Art and Christhood: The Aesthetics of Oscar Wilde. New Jersey: Fairleigh
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Wordsworth, William. ‘Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle’. Poetry Foundation. Consulted
13 May 2014 at: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174824
85
7. Appendix
Primary Literature
The following seven poems in this section are quoted from Prison Poems by Bobby Sands, see p. 82:
Works Cited. Line references added by myself.
THE CRIME OF CASTLEREAGH
I scratched my name but not for fame.
1
Upon the whitened wall,
"Bobby Sands was here," I wrote with fear
In awful shaky scrawl.
I wrote it low where eyes don't go
5
'Twas but to testify,
That I was sane and not to blame
Should here I come to die.
I heard the creak of creeping sneak
The watcher on his round.
‘Twould be, I thought, but all for nought
If caught upon the ground.
My dancing eyes bore no disguise
They leapt like flames of fire,
When Christ I stared as at me glared
The death name of "Maguire".
I paled with fright it was death alright
I stood like trembling bird,
And felt the look, the Watcher's duke
As he passed by unheard.
But one thought lay upon mind's bay
'Twas anchored deep, my friend,
'Twas that man's name and cruel pain
That seen him to his end.
10
All listened hard except the coward
Who squirmed upon his bed,
The pain of men just does not blend
With he whose silvers weighed.
It tore our ears and primed our fears
This man's tormenting groans
It made men reel for all could feel
The hurt on this man's bones.
45
50
55
15
20
The light burned bright was day now night 25
Who cared of such in hell,
For a man's mind spent all it's time
On when he'd leave the cell.
For who knew when or there again
Just who knew if at all,
30
If the next creak or creeping sneak
Was death's breath come to call.
The floor was cold on stocking sole
And boots forbidden things,
For one might die if one might tie
A noose with lacing strings.
For tortured men seek death's quick end
And branchmen know this too,
For stiffs won't talk so men must walk
The floor without a shoe.
I heard the moans and dreadful groans
They rose from some man's cell.
And knew I then that this poor friend
Had something big to tell.
I'd heard him go some hours ago
His step was smooth and light,
But he'd come back like crippled wreck
Or one who'd lost a fight.
35
40
I stewed like rat in porter fat
Fermenting drunk with fear.
When would they come, who'd be the one?
The time was drawing near.
60
I worried sick and scurried quick
Like a blind man in a storm,
I had no course but followed force
Of terror's blasting horn.
The light burned bright was day now night 65
Or was night turned to day.
Forty hours, I'd sweated showers
In panic-stricken fray.
This waiting game was greatest strain
And though I knew their ploy,
70
It did not ease nor did appease
But helped more to destroy.
My stomach turned, it churned and churned
Stirred fast by swirling dread.
'Twas times like this in wretchedness
75
A man fell down and prayed.
'Twas times like this in cowardliness
That men would break their code,
And spill the beans in cowardly screams
To shed this murderous load.
80
The groaning died, we tortured sighed
And silence fell again.
And so did that, that ties a knot
To choke the very brain.
Depression, friend, it did extend
85
86
In waves through every cell,
Crept up behind and bit the mind
Like shock from bursting shell.
I'd nought to do but see it through
I fought it tooth and nail.
It said to me in evil glee,
"Give up and go to jail.
The prison bars you'll see in hours
If you just sign your name.
Or just admit a little bit
Regardless whose to blame."
And fry you in the pan.
She, you or him need bear no sin
They'll give you one for free.
If break you will they sure as hell
Will give you two or three."
90
95
I heard the clink of metal link,
The Watcher was abroad.
He squeaked and creaked, tip-toed and sneaked
On shoes that were not shod.
100
Ne'er e'er he spoke and still unbroke,
The silence hung in awe.
He watched you quake and watched you shake
And told them all he saw.
When he had gone I sat upon
The monstrous heavy bed.
What little air there was to spare
Was pumped out overhead.
It came through vent to no extent
To barely fill the lungs,
So ate we crust of dirty dust
And choked upon our tongues.
And who could sleep in sweltering heat
With rattle of the vent.
‘Pon canvas sheets caked firm in pleats
With sweat that men had spent.
The bright white light gave no respite
And cut the eyes to shreds,
And left an ache to devastate
Already bursting heads.
105
110
115
120
White walls! White walls! Torturous sprawls,
With ne'er a window space.
And so confined a quaking mind
Goes mad in such a place.
The monotony so torturously
125
Cuts deep into the mind,
That men lose hope and just elope
With charge of any kind.
There's one to eight left to deflate
Will e'er they come to end.
I rose depressed for who can rest
With torture to contend.
From wall to wall my thoughts did trawl
Behind my dragging wake,
And shouted they in disarray
"How much dare you take?"
140
The moans and groans they froze our bones 145
I heard the next man pray.
'Twas him again, said I in shame
"That poor lad's on his way."
The very air screamed in despair
Contorted with pure fear,
150
For 'twas a tap on outside flap:
The torture men were here!
The tension snapped like grizzly trap
It gripped me by the throat.
And every sense lost all defence
Like gale-lashed drifting boat.
And undisguised, my thoughts capsized
And drowned they in my fear.
And washed they out with any doubt
Of what was drawing near.
A death hush fell for none could tell
Where fate was going to fall.
All held their breath as pale as death
For pain had come to call.
And stood we still in awful thrill
I trembling unashamed,
An angry wound flashed the room
Twas fear of fear inflamed.
155
160
165
Their cramped slow steps eased through the depths
Of clinging floating fear,
170
I dared a sigh as they passed by
Like hunters stalking deer.
Then came the word like call of bird
They'd found their trembling prey,
And none knew whom was bound for doom 175
As they led him away.
Some hours had passed when someone asked
To see a certain fiend.
That timid voice had made his choice
‘Twas clearly to be seen.
180
With coward’s reprieve he took his leave
Midst cursing, silent flak.
Said I, with sigh, as he passed by,
‘That scoundrel won’t be back’.
130
135
"How much! How much! for pain will touch
Your very spirit, man.
And what you doubt may well slip out
A prisoner's mind may pass the time
In dreamy hopeful thought.
In Castlereagh from day to day
A thought's a battle fought.
And sinking men cling fast, my friend,
To hope within a thought.
A cherished smile or voice of child
Are life rafts to be caught.
From cell to cell they moved 'round hell
185
190
87
With food to feed the starved.
And keeping rules, gave plastic tools
So wrists could not be carved.
On paper plate in greasy state
They placed it in your hand.
But who could eat the devil's treat
Or who could give a damn?
They watched you too, while in the loo,
They stood while you sat down.
But men must do what men must do,
So turn your head around.
And ne'er they slink in all men's stink,
And ne'er they flush or pale.
What kind of men are these, my friend,
Who walk the devil's trail?
195
200
205
As twice before, he groaned once more,
The rattling noise began.
210
I quickened pace to such a race
That God I nearly ran.
That neighbour prayed and bright light slayed
The Watcher came to peak.
I felt the ill of weakening chill,
215
Like wind around my feet.
***
This Citadel, this house of hell,
Is worshipped by the law.
It's built upon a rock of wrong
With hate and bloody straw.
Each dirty brick holds some black trick
Each door's a door of pain
'Twas evil's pen, a devil's den,
And a Citadel of shame.
The Men of Art have lost their heart
They dream within their dreams.
Their magic sold for price of gold
Amidst a people's screams.
They sketch the moon and capture bloom
With genius, so they say.
But ne'er they sketch the quaking wretch
Who lies in Castlereagh
The poet's word is sweet as bird
Romantic tale and prose,
Of stars above and gentle love
And fragrant breeze that blows.
But write they not a single jot
Of beauty tortured sore.
Don't wonder why such pen can lie
For poets are no more.
And where are those whose holy prose
Has given them halo'ed fame?
They kneel and pray, or so they say,
And play their little game.
For politics and love don't mix,
As well the vanquished know.
So genuflect, you tortured wreck
And bear your cross of woe.
***
I slowed the pace this terror race
Was never to be won.
For creak of bed sparked awful dread
And nerves would jump the gun.
T'was ten to nine, for that's the time
I heard the watcher say.
But was it light or was it night
I ne'er knew either way.
250
255
And some are wrought with sickening thought
It tears their very heart.
It eats their mind like burning lime
260
And rips their soul apart.
It puzzles men and muzzles them
It leaves each one distraught.
It is that fiend that asks unseen,
‘Just how did you get caught?'
265
I'd torn my jeans twice at the seams
And hidden matches there.
For men must use each little ruse
And take each passing dare.
If one had luck a lousy butt
Could calm the nerves no end.
For cultured taste takes second place
When you're in hell my friend.
270
220
225
230
235
240
245
The Watcher came to check again,
I froze with sound of key.
Like ticking clock I stopped with shock
As time ran out on me.
And god forbid, but flew it did
Like screeching blackbird flew,
Across the floor, through open door
As he barked 'INTERVIEW!'
275
280
The dreaded word, like trapped bird,
Went shrieking above my head.
It screamed and screamed and God it seemed
Like calling of the dead.
285
He looked at me unenviously.
Said he, 'They want you friend.'
I looked at him, like man in sin,
Goin' out to meet his end.
The Watcher signed and underlined
My name into his book.
But ne'er he'd sign departure time,
The devious dirty crook.
He flanked my side like devil's guide
On lonely gallows trek.
And curiously he stared at me,
Like one not coming back.
I felt the bite of chilly night
290
295
88
And warning in the air.
A yellow moon like eye of doom
Gripped me in its glare.
Down twelve iron steps to darker depths
Where lurking figures were.
A hurried swop, like smuggling drop,
And I was in their care.
A silhouette of heavy set
Spoke out in whispered tones,
"Our friendly quack must do his check
Before we break your bones."
From fore and aft there rose a laugh
That scraped my very spine.
And said a voice, "you'll get no choice,
For, by God, you're goin' to sign."
I seen him come, he looked quite done,
His eyes were red and swollen
And knew I then, that this poor friend
Had his secret stolen.
I caught his eye, as he passed by,
His terror stricken form
Search out the air for nothing there
Like blind man in a storm.
300
350
355
They walked me through an avenue
Where devils lay in wait.
The very air was charged with care
For there lay evil fate.
A man could feel the agony steel
Quietly o’ver his skin,
They looked at me expectantly
And each bore his own grin.
And in her wake she left an ache
That gripped my very heart.
If men but knew what she went through
They’d tear their souls apart.
‘In here,’ he said by nod of head
The door closed like a cave.
I stood like one in face of gun
With one foot in the grave.
400
405
410
360
365
The doctor stood a gaping prude
'Tis hard to hide distaste.
"All right," said he officiously,
"Strip off, down to the waist."
370
He'd stop and stare, and both here and there
When fancy was his whim,
And gape at me quite hatefully
As if I'd bitten him.
He glared at me begrudgingly,
He asked if I were ill.
I shook my head, for sickening dread,
Could not be cured by pill.
I quaked like swine on the slaughter line
As he said, "You're quite fit.
So send him on, he's good and strong,
And roast him on the spit."
They led her by, her head held high
Their faces hanging low.
It seemed to me quite obviously
That they had come to woe.
She looked at me determinedly
Across that gap of doom,
And smiled did she so pitifully
Like rose in winter bloom.
375
380
385
390
We came to halt for some default
Caused to groups to collide.
They looked perplexed stopped in their tracks
For passage wasn’t wide.
They shuffled back then made attack
395
Then shuffled back in shame,
For no-one knew quite what to do
So all just tried again.
They both stood there, an awkward pair,
From toe to tail they swayed,
With casual stands, pocketed hands,
Expressions carefully weighed.
So unalike as day and night
This sneaky shrewd duet.
These shark-eyed hawks of chatty talks
And I like etiquette.
415
420
They have their means to make you scream
And cower to their whims.
Some quake and shake before they break 425
just fearing for their limbs,
Then fall like leaves from autumn trees
Before the axe has swung.
For such is fear that men adhere
To having themselves hung.
430
They have their means and dirty schemes
To loosen up your tongue.
Some talk so sweet you'd think their feat
Was one of pleasant fun.
But soon you learn and soon you yearn
435
For safety of the cell,
For what was thought was penance taught
Was but the gates of hell.
From day to day in Castlereagh
The hours tick by like years,
440
While to and fro men come and go
To play upon your fears.
And some wear masks for their grim tasks
To hide their black disgrace.
But what black mask, I dare to ask,
445
Could hide the devil's face?
‘The law is right’, the judge will cite,
‘The public must have care.
A crime is crime in any mind, committed
anywhere.’
Hypocritical, parasitical bastards
Cry ‘Hurray!’
450
89
But they would yell like souls in hell
If locked in Castlereagh.
They do not watch while minutes hatch
Into eternities,
Reciting prayer in awful fear
Upon their bended knees.
Nor is each sound a worry found
Each creak the devil's tread.
Each shattered thought a battle fought
Within an aching head.
Nor do they twitch with nervous itch
As clouds of dread creep in,
Nor gaze upon a wealth of wrong
That stares at them like sin.
Nor do they sleep nor do they weep
In little lonely tombs,
For sleep they 'pon a bed of wrong
On others' bleeding wounds.
With sweating toil and bubbling oil
Men once tortured men.
On ghastly rack they broke your back
Until you broke, my friend.
But modern day in Castlereagh
The police persuade with care.
They draw a line, then walk your spine
Until you sign - in err.
455
460
465
470
475
Now some will say in sweetest way
They do not wish you harm,
480
They try to coax, they try to hoax
They murder you with charm.
They give you smokes, they crack you jokes,
Allaying all your fears,
Then beg you sign that awful line
485
To get you thirty years.
They flatter you and shatter you
With pleasantry and smiles.
They'd set you free quite readily
If you would mark their files.
They crawl to you and drawl to you
As sweet as violin,
But underneath there hides a thief
Whose tune is that of sin.
Some bear the stain of cruel Cain,
These are the men of doom.
The torture-men who go no end
To fix you in that room.
To brutalise they utilise
Contrivances of hell,
For great duress can mean success
When tortured start to tell.
Like withered leaf or side of beef
They hang you by the heels,
Then kidneys crunch with heavy punch
To torture jiggling squeals.
490
495
500
505
Bones are bruised 'cause boots are used
To loosen up your tongue,
So men admit a little bit
When nothing have they done.
510
They chop your neck, then walk your back
Spreadeagle you like pelt.
For private parts their special arts
Are sickeningly felt.
They squeeze them tight with no respite
515
'Till a man cries for the womb
That give him birth to this cruel earth
And torture of that room.
Some play with threats to seek regrets
Others play with bribes,
In Castlereagh they'd dearly pay
For what a secret hides.
And some poor folk throw off their yoke
To whisper what they know,
For price of gold they sell their soul
For men can sink that low.
520
525
They came and came, their job the same,
In relays ne'er they stopped.
'Just sign the line!' they shrieked each time
And beat me till I dropped.
530
They tortured me quite viciously
They threw me through the air.
It got so bad it seemed I had
Been beat beyond repair.
The days expired and no one tired,
Except ofcourse the prey,
And knew they well that time would tell
If I had words to say.
Each dirty trick they laid on thick
For no one heard or saw,
Who dares to say in Castlereagh
The ‘police’ would break the law!
535
540
They poured it on, this boiling wrong,
The body burned with pain,
‘Till hefty throws and heavy blows
545
Came hurling down like rain.
'Till clumps of hair lay everywhere
And blood lay red as wine,
One would have thought a prey was caught
And butchered like a swine.
550
All things must come to pass as one
So hope should never die.
There is no height or bloody might
That a freeman can't defy.
There is no source or foreign force
Can break one man who knows,
That his free-will no thing can kill
And from that freedom grows.
In despairing gloom, out of that room
They led me quite depressed.
555
560
90
This dirty horde their heads now lowered
For I had not confessed.
Down that isle in funeral file
We shuffled in retreat,
And well I knew that this black crew
Were chewing on defeat.
They walked me through that avenue
Still devils lay in wait.
The very air was charged with care
For there lay evil fate,
And I could feel the agony steel
Quietly o’er my skin,
And knew I well that this was hell
And I was still within.
565
570
From day to day in Castlereagh
575
The hours tick by like years,
While to and fro men come and go
To play upon your fears.
And some wear masks for their grim tasks
To hide their black disgrace.
580
But what black mask, I dare to ask,
Could hide the devil's face?
As dawn converged the world emerged
Into a brand new day.
I stepped out to a sky of blue
Where silver fleeces lay.
The chirp of bird I plainly heard
And as the breeze went by,
I drank the air in thirsty tear
With greed upon my eye.
I drank the day o'er Castlereagh
Like one back from the grave,
And feasted high upon the sky
Like one with awful crave.
Each soothing breeze was laced with ease
Each golden ray with life,
Each little bird that chirped a word
Echoed sweet as fife.
The Watcher gazed with deep amaze
Or as if he'd saw a ghost.
His face was set like losing bet
Or a hollow ended boast.
Up twelve iron steps to silent depths
He led me to my cell,
He could not gauge for hate and rage
How another wouldn't tell.
He turned away in pure dismay
With shrug and sigh of hurt.
It seemed no more he’d sneak the floor
This dirty, low-down blirt.
And n’er a sound was heard around
As the hours crept on by.
And God it seemed if someone screamed
The very air would cry.
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590
595
600
605
610
***
This Citadel, this house of hell,
Is worshipped by the law,
It’s built upon a rock of wrong
With hate and bloody straw.
Each dirty brick holds some black trick,
Each door’s a door to pain.
‘Tis evil’s pen a devil’s den
And Citadel of shame.
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620
***
I heard the clink of metal link
The Watcher was abroad.
He squeaked and creaked, tip-toed and sneaked 625
On shoes that were not shod.
N’er ‘er he spoke and still unbroken
The silence hung in awe.
He watched you quake and watched you shake
And told them all he saw.
630
‘Twas in the night the burning light
Grew dim and barely lit,
And shadows fell with the cell
To almost smother it.
‘Twas hard to sleep for vigil keep.
The tortured and oppressed,
And day to day in Castlereagh
The tortured know no rest.
The shadows crept and figures lept
Across the murky beams
That stole in by the judas spy
In perpetuating streams…
Then dearest Christ! As if enticed
They danced around the wall
And peered at me so hauntingly
With faces white and small.
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640
645
They moved around and moved around
Just staring at the bed.
They marched in pairs with tortured stares
For they were marching dead.
650
Each looked a loss, each bore a cross
Upon his bended back,
And on it plain was that man’s name
For he’d knew torture’s rack.
Each gruesome weird had rambling beard
And wore a blanket course.
His flashing eyes spit out despise
With my stifying force,
And bloody tears in blushing seers
Cascaded through the gloom,
To paint a rose in trembling pose
Of beauty and tortured bloom.
They courted pain and flaunted strain
Contorting in their throes
What these poor men had met, my friend,
A man dare not suppose,
For round and round and up and down
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670
675
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Their faces crissed and crossed
‘Til in a sea of purgatory
Their painful shapes were lost.
680
I heard the clink of metal link
The Watcher was not there.
And no bloody eye peeped through the spy
But someone cast a stare.
I felt the chill of creeping ill
685
Someone was abroad,
And knew I not, just who or what
But prayed my prayers to God.
The quaking cell as if in spell
Began to winge and weep.
Then awful shapes with sinners’ gapes
Stole by in ghostly sweep.
Whizzened apes with stumpy napes
Danced by in shrieking fear
And cavalcade of evil grade
Filed by with dirty lear.
The houls of ghouls and hoots of owls
Rang round that little room,
And devils’ rooks and phantom spooks
Sailed by in deathly gloom,
And hideous, perfidious – serpents
Snaked and hissed,
While silhouettes made pirouettes
In terrifying twist.
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Oh! Gorgons and Morons
And vipers danced a ball,
ugly beasts and Satan’s priests
715
Stood naked ‘pon the wall.
Crude and lewd the spectres spewed
And goblins jigged in rage,
While snarling shrimps and imps and pimps
Threw sins onto the stage.
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Wizards, Lizards, sins in blizards
Swirled round above their head,
Squealing bats and snapping gnats
735
They danced in gloom, they danced to doom
They waltzed with mortal sin
Shuffling and scuttling
‘Fore dark and evil wind.
740
They inched and winched and pinched and lynched
And ‘pon that scaffold swung
‘Twas evil fray in Castlereagh
Until that man was hung.
690
A demon came his eyes aflame
705
And round him was the law.
They danced like in Hades and rats in plagues
And Christ I froze in awe.
They spun a cord this gruesome horde
On loom of doom and sin,
710
To make a noose that would induce
A tortured soul within.
The witch and bitch and thieving rich
Threw up a scaffold black
A Demogogue blasphemed to God
In mocking disrespect.
The devil’s sons and evil ones
Gathered round like fire,
And Jesus Christ their sacrifice!
Was murdered Brian Maguire.
Would suck the bloody thread.
And all spat hate to that man’s fate
And all cried, ‘Satan come!’
All praised the law in evil awe
For evil is but one.
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The devils fled for life was dead
The law hid in its shame.
The butchered air gasped in prayer
And tears fell down like rain.
The very walls were appaled,
My eyes were red as fire,
For I had cried a tearful tide
In mourning of Maguire.
This Citadel, this house of hell,
Is worshipped by the law.
It's built upon a rock of wrong
With hate and bloody straw.
Each dirty brick holds some black trick
Each door's a door of pain
'Twas evil's pen, a devil's den,
And a Citadel of shame.
The Men of Art have lost their heart
They dream within their dreams.
Their magic sold for price of gold
Amidst a people's screams.
They sketch the moon and capture bloom
With genius, so they say.
But ne'er they sketch the quaking wretch
Who lies in Castlereagh
The poet's word is sweet as bird
Romantic tale and prose,
Of stars above and gentle love
And fragrant breeze that blows.
But write they not a single jot
Of beauty tortured sore.
Don't wonder why such pen can lie
For poets are no more.
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760
765
770
775
***
I heard the clink of metal link,
The Watcher was abroad.
He squeaked and creaked, tip-toed and sneaked
On shoes that were not shod.
780
Ne'er e'er he spoke and still unbroke,
The silence hung in awe.
He watched you quake and watched you shake
And told them all he saw.
92
***
A man must live, a man must give
By law and justice, friend.
Let all men know that it be so
That justice knows no end.
For king and knave, freeman and slave
Must face the king of kings,
And each must pay in his own way
For great and little things.
And he with shame and he with blame
Must answer every sin,
And no black lie or reason why
Will cleanse his soul within.
So listen well, you pimps of hell
You beasts of Castlereagh!
Both law an man will meekly stand
‘Fore God on Judgement Day!
In Castlereagh from day to day
The tortured know no rest,
And men don't sleep and men must weep
Until they have confessed.
Confessed to "crime" for sentenced time
Though guilt they may not know
But that is law however raw,
So bear your cross of woe…
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And poorest are the lonely dead
Who stare at earthen sky,
And rot alone in skin and bone
Upon the spot they lie.
But poorer still are stupid fools
Who think they'll never die.
They found him on his own door-step
In crimson pool he lay,
His deathly eyes in fool's surprise
Stared blankly at the day,
For plain it seemed he'd never dreamed
That death would come his way.
In draped pine box he made his way.
To that hole of no return,
The morbid band moaned death's lament
So his very soul would churn,
But this sly soul had tortured men
And surely had to burn.
From dust to dust, ash to ash,
The whizzened parson said,
As sprinkling clay in loud dull thuds
Fell down above the dead,
And covered up forever more
That fiend that luck had fled.
For he had tortured men no less
And by God he done it good,
For treacherous are the cunning cowards
And devious are the shrewd.
But bastards are the hated Screws
Who tortured men in nude.
And he had tortured men no less
For he was such a Screw.
Yet! whinging voices cried aloud
What did this poor man do?
He only done what madmen done
Upon the silent Jew.
THE TORTURE MILL - H BLOCK
On others' wounds we do not sleep
For all men's blood is red,
Nor do we lick the poor man's sore
Nor drink the tear he shed,
For King and Knave must have a grave
And poorest are the dead.
His black splashed hat lay 'pon the box,
'Twas flanked by ten and two.
Twelve grim men of this dead friend
That vengeance came and slew,
That haunting ghost that catches most
Had caught this bugger too.
The grave is deep the grave is cold
A murky red clay tomb,
While underneath the body rots,
Above, the primrose bloom.
So do not cringe and do not winge
For each will be there soon.
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So bury him and let him lie
And play your brass tattoo,
But write above his marble stone
"Here lies a stinking screw."
For if men knew what he had done
They'd turn their backs and spew.
We do not sleep on other's wounds
Or lick their bleeding scars,
By avenues of marble halls
Citadels or towers.
For prisoners lie in darkened depths
Behind the prison bars.
So sleep we ‘pon each day of pain
That screams within it wake,
And screeches at each shattered mind
How much dare you to take?
How much, how much, for pain is such
That even heroes quake.
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Pitiful is the lonely man
Who watches night go by,
To hear the screams from comrades’ dreams75
The gentle sob or sigh.
But wretched is that lonely man
Who knows that he must die.
93
And who are we but mortal men
Who burn in others’ hate,
And slump beneath the murderous load
Of torture’s grueling weight.
But though we slump we do not fall
And endless is our fate.
And endless is the fate of we
Who fight within the gloom,
For we have been imprisoned,
Since conceived within the womb,
But freedom’s fruit will blossom too
In the darkness of the tomb.
He will lie within the grave,
The grave he dug with pain,
And pain of those who wear no clothes
And he dug it with disdain.
So there he lies ‘neath earthen skies
In everlasting shame.
***
There was no star nor heaven’s blaze
No trumpet blast nor horn,
No angel chorus sang in praise
To harken forth the morn.
For freemen lay in tears of grief
No savior to them born.
Blessed is the man who stands
Before his God in pain.
And on his back a cross of woe
His wounds a gaping shame.
For this man is a son of God
And hallowed be his name.
***
The word came up the frozen pipes
That one was off the air,
And each man knew a dirty Screw
Had got his dues somewhere.
And each man knew we'd get it too
But who could give a care.
The whispered word the naked heard
Was passed from cell to cell,
And each soul smiled like naughty child
At what he had to tell.
For though we lay in slow decay
We heard his requiem bell.
He sat upon the filthy foam
His piercing eyes ablaze.
He stared as if he did not know
Like one within a daze.
But all men wear this crazy stare
Within the dirty Maze.
He stared upon nightmarish walls
As if they held the key
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90
To some dark secret of his soul
That would not set him free,
130
That hidden cleft through which but death
May find tranquillity.
He did not smile like naughty child
'Pon hearing what had passed,
Nor did he muse the morbid news
Nor question did he ask,
But unleashed a yell that frightened Hell
Like Gabriel's trumpet blast!
He laughed aloud behind a shroud
Of yellow skin and beard,
His blazing eyes burned with despise,
And madness of the weird.
And thought I then, to this poor friend,
A devil had appeared.
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But knew I well in this dark hell
That torture does such things,
And leaves the brain like bare terrain
From which but madness springs.
And knew I well that in each cell
The sanest hung on strings.
***
We do not wear the guilty stare
Of those who bare a crime,
Nor do we don that badge of wrong
To tramp the penal line.
So men endure a pit of sewer
For freedom of the mind.
Nor do we bend to black-clad men
When torture scream is shrill,
They who slight God's given right
Of each to his free will,
So bend the back upon the rack
Of H-Block torture mill.
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Each cell does smell within that hell
Where the naked cough and spit.
Each wall is smeared with something weird,165
So the governor must admit,
On jail cement is excrement,
But what he means is shit!
And so it is this pit of his
Is reeking high and low,
This dirty mess he made no less
By casting men to woe.
And now he squirms not from the germs
But what the world may know.
They tramped us down into the ground
And righteous men ne'er spoke.
And in our nude they fixed us good
For freemen must be broke.
What could be done but smear that scum
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94
And Christ it is no joke!
They do not call you by your name
Nor nickname try to fix,
For love and hate are hard to mate
And right and wrong don't mix.
You have no name but number plain,
"Move on, ten sixty-six"!
They call us "cons" to right their wrongs
They do it with a pen.
They call us "crims" to suit the whims
Of politics, my friend.
But they can call us all they want
For people call us Men.
***
From wall to door he walked the floor
Listening for a sound.
Each sudden creak or sneaky squeak
Sent him swishing round,
His bulging eyes so terrorised
Near fell upon the ground.
180
You do not quake each day you wake
To a hymn of dawn that roars,
230
When stern-faced rats in black splashed hats
Steal in for Satan’s chores,
And with their batons high and hard
They batter down the doors.
185
You do not lie like pigs in sty
Upon a concrete bed.
Or watch them come before the sun
To count the living dead,
And ask of Christ this sacrifice
Maybe your penance paid.
There are no trees or cooling breeze,
To soothe our reddened eyes,
Like clinging briar the grey blade wire
Strangles cloudy skies,
And every cloud's a bleeding shroud,
And crowned with thorns it cries.
To dance and prance to love's romance
Is elegant and neat.
To wine and dine on red port wine
Is such a tasty treat.
To eat and sit where you've just shit!
Is no so bloody sweet!
Shocked you are , by far, by far
But shocked you do not know.
Perhaps you say this poet's way
Is crude and very low?
But in the blocks men have had shocks
That filled the very poe!
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You do not pray through each long day
Or pray into the night,
Take air in sips with prayer on lips,
To sleep may steal your fright.
And cross your head in silent dread
As darkness turns to light.
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That eight foot space 'twas freedom's grace.
To exercise the bones,
200
With every step the body wept
In awful moans and groans,
And sounded like the gnawny grind
Of some one rubbing stones.
***
Beneath the sky men live and die
For man must die from birth.
And some ne'er see the flower or tree
Or know their lovely worth,
But in the gloom of prison tomb
Men crave for Mother earth.
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***
From wall to door he walked the floor
Like a man trapped in a mine,
And looked at me quite desperately
Behind a mask of grime.
For with each step he sank a depth
From which he had to climb.
And time is but an endless rut
And each man in his own,
And some climb out and some do not
And some lie dumb and prone,
While time goes by like cloudy sky
Its destiny unknown.
Now keeping time to squelch of slime
He marched a quickened pace,
Those blazened eyes like angry skies
Rolled round his ashened face,
And on he went like a regiment
That fled the battle place.
He ran that floor from wall to door
And glared at me quite dumb,
And I at him like mortal sin
For words just would not come.
For this was hell and in this cell
A soul was on the run.
Each wretched soul in that vile hole
Had one thought on his mind:
We'd get it too was what we knew
When night time would unwind
'Cause each man knew just what was due
For each man wasn't blind.
225
For come the morn as day is born
And all is deadly still,
The dirty Screws on muffled shoes
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95
Creep in to make a kill,
But first of all they shriek and bawl
Like madmen doing drill.
They’ll let us know it’s time to go
And gauntlet they will form,
From wing to wing their blows will sting
Like hornets in a swarm,
And naked men must run its end
Like seabirds in a storm.
So each man knew just what was due
And each man paced the floor.
A creeping dread was greatly fed
As one would think once more,
And dread set in and ate like sin
Right to your very core.
Some rant and rave with awful crave
For nicotine and smoke,
To such degrees that 'pon their knees
The very dust they hoke,
Elusive ends in gasping bends
To kill their choking yoke.
And some inhale to such avail
The smouldering blanket shred,
For nerves are terse and options scarce
To tame the killing dread,
So pale as death with burning breath
They drag each reddened thread.
The crawling day just ran away
For time runs fast 'fore dread,
And near and near we came to fear
As minutes fell down dead.
And any hope we tried to grope
Jumped up aFnd promptly fled.
The dying night was bleeding white
The dark was on the run
And dawning day drove it away
Before the blood-eyed sun,
And by the shadows on the walls
We knew that they had come.
***
There was no star nor heaven’s blaze
No trumpet blast nor horn,
No angel chorus sang in praise
To harken forth the morn.
For freemen lay in tears of grief
No savior to them born.
Blessed is the man who stands
Before his God in pain.
And on his back a cross of woe
His wounds a gaping shame.
For this man is a son of God
And hallowed be his name.
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295
300
305
310
315
320
325
330
***
They beat the flaps with drumming wraps
And banged the pipes and doors.
So terrified we almost cried
Before their vicious roars,
And though we froze for lack of clothes
The sweat oozed out our pores.
The dirty Screw wears black and blue
The devil knows him well,
And he and they from grey of day
Call into every cell,
And stoke the fires that search desires
Within the blocks of hell.
Still keeping time to squelch of slime
he marched a quickened pace,
Those blazened eyes like angry skies
Rolled round his ashened face,
And on he went like a regiment
That fled the battle place.
He ran that floor from wall to door
And glared at me quite dumb,
And I at him like mortal sin
For words just would not come.
For this was hell and in this cell
A soul was on the run.
Then came the reek of stomach weak
For some men retch with fear,
And worse again and n’er the shame
the bowels of men appear.
For listen, friend, we don’t pretend,
There are no heroes here.
The double-lock flew back in shock
Then came the first man’s name.
‘Twas times like this that cowardliness
Would leave a man in shame,
‘Cause each man knew just what was due
for all would get the same.
He ran wild-eyed like screaming child
Before a horde of rats,
They beat him down upon the ground
With thumps and thuds and slaps,
And then within a ring of sin
They kicked him to collapse.
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340
345
350
355
360
365
370
They sneered and cheered, leered and jeered
At their dirty handy work.
Each dirty Screw knew what to do
375
Each wore a dirty smirk,
They flaunted hate, these men of state,
And each one went berserk.
They grab your legs like wooden pegs
And part them to they split.
They pry and spy and even try
To look in through the split.
380
96
Both north and south to find your mouth
To try look ‘out’ of it.
To roll and droll on country stroll
Is quite a pleasant flip,
To chase and race through open space
Is such a thrilling skip,
To trot like swine through one’s urine
Is not so nice a trip.
The dirty Screws they stand in two’s
Along that tortured way.
Their batons drawn to beat upon
The frantic screaming prey,
‘’Tis but a job,’ they winge and sob,
And take the devil’s pay.
And scruples none, note even one,
Do hold this gruesome band.
How they debase their own cruel face
Is hard to understand.
But to remain untouched by shame,
Is damning to their clann.
He ran that floor from wall to door
And glared at me quite dumb,
And I at him like mortal sin
For words just would not come.
For this was hell and in this cell
A soul was on the run.
And on and on they moved along
we listened to the fray.
And somewhere near I chanced to hear
The first bird of the day,
Its dawning tune rang out like doom
And died in disarray.
They search your hair with greatest care
Shin lights inside your nose.
Your mouth and ears and very fears
They scrutinise like crows,
And may I ask what is their task,
For we men wear no clothes?
They search your back and every crack
Gloomy-faced and stern,
And scrape and gape at every space
Like doctor seeking germ.
But lewd and crude they fix you good
To make the patient squirm.
There is no crime in deed or mind
No dirty evil lure,
That any screw would rue to do
To each let this be sure.
They stoop so low they undergo
The morals of a whore.
They squat us o'er the blackened floor
Upon a mirror clear.
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395
400
405
410
415
420
425
430
They shine a light for better sight
To see what may appear.
I sometimes think they have a kink
The way they juke and peer!
And blood is hot and blood can clot
For I saw it on the ground.
It seems to say what's gone this way
Was pack of horse and hound,
But no smart cox or shrewest fox
Could take this hunt to ground.
The medic's job though some what odd
Is to patch a body's hurt.
To nurse a man not curse a man
When body is inert.
Though in the blocks these humane chaps
Just rub your face in dirt.
Like screaming child I ran wild-eyed
Before that horde of rats.
They beat me down upon the ground
With thumps and thuds and slaps.
And then within the ring of sin
They beat me to collapse.
Like drunken man who can not stand
I swayed like wavering tree,
And felt worse than a sea sick-man
Upon a raging sea.
And worse again I bore a pain
That almost scuttled me.
The ace of spades is sign of Hades,
The Screw the sign of shame.
Whoever mates with these black apes
No doubt will bear the same
And in their grave they’ll rue and rave,
The marriage of that name.
In angry tear with grip of hair
They dragged me at a trot,
They strangled me, entangled me,
Like squeezing tight garrotte,
Then threw me in a cell of sin
My body in a knot.
He ran wild-eyed like screaming child
I heard their bawling cries.
And ran he did to painful bid
With terror in his eyes,
Until he fell into the cell
In lemming-like surprise.
'Hurry up!! and scurry up!!'
They screamed at tearing men.
We heard the cracks and baton whacks
For every step were ten,
And every man swore by his clan
To kill the cutty wren.
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455
460
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97
They all went still they'd had their fill
And Christ they had it full.
To do such things take special things
Learnt in the devil's school,
For when it comes to gauntlet runs
The wicked are no fool.
'Tis joyful thing in early spring
The morning lark to hear,
The mistle thrush on far-off bush
Crooning sharp and clear.
But who may know if lark or crow
With bleeding, busted ear?
Or who may sniff the fragrant whiff
Of daffodils and rose,
The wild green hills in autumn frills
Awaiting winter snows,
When worse the course you have to nurse
A broken bloody nose.
So bend the back upon the rack
Of H-Block Torture Mill.
490
WING SHIFT IN H-BLOCK
495
Blessed is the man who stands
Before his God in pain.
And on his back a cross of woe
His wounds a gaping shame.
For this man is a son of God
And hallowed be his name.
They lounge in might and glory bright
This empire once so grand.
With bloody fleets and dirty feats,
They build it without span.
But tank or gun they have not one
To break a blanket man.
We do not wear the guilty stare
Of those who bear a crime,
Nor do we don the badge of wrong
To tramp the penal line.
So all endure this pit of sewer
For freedom of the mind.
Nor do we bend to black clad men
When torture scream is shrill
They who slight God's given right
Of each to his free will.
The boys all knew two days before
It always was that way.
It gave a man two days respite
To worry sick and pray.
And some grew ill and some went dumb,
Some paled with awful fear.
I heard the very birds walk by
As crossing day drew near.
1
5
500
We fought back tears and scorned our fears 505
And cast aside our pain
And to our doors we stood in scores
To conquer their black fame
For loud and high we sang our cry
'A Nation once again!'
510
***
There was no star nor heaven’s blaze
No trumpet blast nor horn,
No angel chorus sang in praise
To harken forth the morn.
For freemen lay in tears of grief
No savior to them born.
540
The minutes ticked from hour to hour,
The days stole blackly in,
He looked at me with scarey eyes,
And I with same at him.
And n’er we spoke but paced the floor,
And wished it was our day,
For greatest curse was listening
While comrades ran the fray.
They beat their batons on the pipes,
And roared in wild-mouthed glee,
‘Twas times like this a man grew weak,
And buckled at the knee.
We knew their terror game alright,
And they our trembling fright,
He looked at me and I at him,
In matching deathly white.
10
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520
525
The grillman called the dreaded words,
My God the whole block shook,
‘Lock ‘em up,’ he cried and cried again,’
‘No witnesses may look.’
We stewed like prunes in deathly hush,
And stomachs gave to fear,
For men do mess the corner floor,
When crossing time’s so near.
We glided back and forth the cell,
Our blankets swishing time,
And each little creak echoed loud,
In startling eerie chime.
The quiet pressed in silent squeeze,
‘Twas a petrifying thing,
I said to him in whispered dare,
‘The devil’s in that wing.’
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35
40
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He passed me by like flitting ghost,
I met his eyes aglare.
They danced like hurtling raindrops do
Cascading everywhere.
And we heard the slam of heavy door,
‘Twouldd not be long we knew,
We sighed the sigh of fettered men,
To brave the tempest through.
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We heard the first one come afar,
Like thunder in the clouds,
He rolled across from ‘B’ to ‘C’,
Sent on by yelling crowds.
We heard the stamp of heavy boot,
The slap and crash of hand,
That left us squirming nought to do,
Like fish upon dry land.
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Dear God we sensed their evilness,
Each blow we felt at heart,
As comrades fell upon the ground,
It tore our souls apart.
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‘Move! Move!’ they screamed, those cowardly
Screws,
And move by God they did.
What naked man would dare defy,
The batons wacking bid.
They hung the boys like spit-eyed pigs,
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O’er table top spread rude,
Where they would kick like new born child,
Embarassed in their nude.
They pulled each limb so far apart,
You felt the body tear.
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They crucified you in your fear,
And hung you in the air.
The mirrors shone by flashing lights,
Detectors bleeped for steel,
But all the dirty probing tools,
Could sense not what we feel.
He passed me by as white as chalk,
His eyes in hateful glow,
Says he in choking trembling words,
‘There’s twenty more to go.’
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‘There’s twenty more to go,’ said he,
As they ran in naked file,
And smashed ‘gainst grills and wielding blows,
In reeling drunken style.
They beat their batons loud and hard,
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As beaters of the hunt,
Like white gazelles the naked fell,
Brought down by torture’s brunt.
The silence came in wake of pain,
For all had ran that hell,
And lay they panting sore and glad,
Of reaching that dark cell.
And lay we now with beating heart,
For next to move were we,
Such are the trials of blanket men,
In the depths of H-Block Three.
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A TRIBUTE TO SCREWS
In the blackness I awoke like a corpse in the grave,
Engulfed by the fear of a ghostly wave.
There were devils and angels by the foot of my bed
And they fought for my soul to the night sky fled.
1
With trembling lips I prayed in the gloom
Questioning my birth to die in a tomb.
The silence was angry and it bit deep in the mind
And it screeched in my face, ‘You’re here for all time.’
5
Four bare walls make this prison cell
The eight by eight space the prisoners call hell,
A concrete burden that is borne on the back
And some call it ‘bird’ and some call it ‘wack’.
‘Tis a terrible feeling to be naked and down
To be dirty and itchy and to sleep on the ground,
‘Tis a terrible feeling to live and feel like a rat
But ‘tis worse again still to be treated like that.
They’re ungodly dungeons these blocks of stone
Where a man meets himself and finds he’s alone,
And black devils walk their inner ways
Where weeks seem like years and minutes like days.
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Each morning they come banging on the doors
And bid us good morning with obscenities, strings of curses and roars.
Those murderers of hope those rogues of the mind
Oh those godfearing Christians when it come dying time.
They’re the dregs of the earth and the prisoners’ curse.
Some call them Screws, but more call them worse.
They watch while you weep, they watch while you kneel
They watch while you die, your death’s secret to steal.
‘Tis hard to believe and yet even harder to take
Why a man will stoop lower than the belly of a snake.
Some plead greed of money, some just out of trait,
But the blackest devil is out of bigoted hate.
I’ve been locked in old dungeons and I’ve been locked in a Cage
And I’ve watched these scoundrels play their lives on a stage.
These rough and tough cowards, these hypocritical fools,
Who beat men to pulp and forget their own rules.
Is there such a damning indictment to this class of scum
Than the million crimes they have already done?
Be it an African dungeon or the old Bastille
Their cruelty’s no different, nor the pain that we feel!
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Has ever such slyness been born ‘fore mens’ eyes
Than these conniving bastards, these lovers of lies,
Has ever such a profession been developed so pure
That in lowliness it stands higher than the back of a whore.
Have ever such talents been seasoned to prime
Has ever such evil been born in a mind,
They make Judas seem innocent, they degrade even sin
They’ll be ejected from Hades, should they ever get in!
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I know them I tell you and I know their stare,
And the crunch of their batons that reddens the hair.
I know their bravado, when they stand six to one
And likewise their cringing cowardliness, when they stand to one!
They’ve broke our women’s hearts, these dastardly fiends,
They’ve built towers of worry and crushed our young dreams,
They have greyed our poor mothers and helped dig their graves,
Is there one among you unsickened, by the deeds of these knaves?
Was only but yesterday that I sat in the space
With thirty Screws encroaching my thirty minutes’ grace,
In the space of a pen where the families trade tears
In hushed whispers we tremble, betraying our fears.
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And they, these magpies, of expression and thought
They cling to every syllable that our secrets be caught
Those sneaks, those creeps, those evil foxes
Degrading the meek in dirty little boxes.
There is no place more lonely than the prison cell
But ‘tis a hundred times worse in this living hell.
Oh I have eaten rubbish, I live with maggots and flies;
Yet it’s the human parasites I’ve learned to despise.
Filthy ragged threads, clothe our pale bodies no end
We political dungeon dwellers – we oppressed blanket men.
We stand in the face of all – we bow to none
For in the depths of the dungeons, there is no where to run.
People of Ireland, dwell well on those lines
They hold joke nor jest nor simply rhyme,
If you knew but the torture, that the prisoners know well
You’d storm these dungeons, you’d tear down this hell.
But it’s more pity that I hold for these exploiters of pain
Than a deep-scarred-revenge for to see them in flame,
For be it heaven or the republic, or what may come to pass
‘Twill be woe to the devils of this murderous class.
They will be saluted with hatred, they’ll be acknowledged by scorn
And our ghosts will haunt them, and theirs not yet born.
Prisoners and bondsmen, mark me well you shall see
These whores of justice perish – at your liberty.
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POETIC JUSTICE
It was the strangest dream, sure enough,
1
Of all I’ve had,
I dreamt I had left this life,
And to be honest I felt glad.
And so I felt my soul ascending
5
I looked down to whence I came,
And all I saw was nakedness, suffering and pain.
Soon I reached a golden gate
Where other souls stood in line,
To meet the Lord I joined the queue,
My fate to be defined,
And gradually as we moved along,
Ever closer to the gate,
I saw some go on and some go down,
Testifying to their fate.
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COMRADES IN THE DARK
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Well we reached the golden gate,
Where the Lord sat on his throne
25
And Peter called upon me
To come to them alone.
“Bob”, said the Lord, “You done all right down
there,
Of torture pain and suffering
Don’t I know you had your share.”
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“Let him in Peter”, said the Lord,
“And go in peace my son,
For the Lord your God forgives you
For everything you’ve done.”
“And what about those H-blocks, Roy
And all those naked men you kept?
“What is to be done?” said Peter,
“My Lord you must contrive.”
“Poetic justice, Peter,” said the Lord,
“Send him down to H-Block Five!”
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Then there came a familiar voice
That didn’t take much tracin’,
From the blackest soul in all the line,
It was that of Roy Mason!
To the other souls I heard him say
20
“I’m alright, I only did my job”.
I shouted up the line to him
“That’s another lie, just wait ‘til I tell God.”
Well, was I a happy soul
For the good Lord had forgiven all,
I was just about to collect my wings
When I heard Roy get his call.
“Mason – Lord”, said Peter,
“I think you know him well,
And by the colour of that soul of his
He’s plenty there to tell.”
“Peace be with you Roy”, said the Lord,
“Have you anything to confess?”
“Lord,” said Roy, “You must believe me,
It was Cromwell made that mess,
And Merlyn Rees and Whitelaw,
They led me far astray,
Lord, what else could I do down there,
I could find no other way.”
Don’t you know”, said the Lord, “I watched them,
And every night they wept?
Roy, you tortured them,
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And you held them all those years,
Naked and suffering,
They wept a million tears.”
There came a splendid golden sun,
Across the darkened skies,
It woke the bondsman from his dream,
As it fell upon his eyes.
It lit the ways of freedom’s path,
Sent forth the singing lark,
And bore a weeping blossom ‘pon,
The flowers in the dark.
They bloomed by country lane and town,
In freedom’s fragrant scent,
Giving heart to a weary folk,
When dark days came and went.
And grew they strong and beautiful,
Midst fortune cold and stark,
The fairest flowers of their kind,
These roses of the dark.
The winds of war came sweeping cruel,
The blossom would not cry,
Oh how it broke the freeman’s heart,
To see the first rose die.
Some soldiers plucked the garden’s joy,
And left a burning mark,
Upon the silver petalled bloom,
Now fettered in the dark.
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These flowers weep in dank cold cells,
No sun to light the gloom,
They suffer torture’s vilest scorn
To wither in their bloom.
But ne’er they yield these lovely things,
O hear they freedom’s mark
They are the light to guide the poor
These flowers in the dark.
I care not should we freemen die,
To see the garden flower,
And humble bluebells lift their heads,
To rise all in their power.
I hold a tear, torn sore in heart,
‘Twere e’r a Joan of Arc,
‘Tis each one of these saintly flowzers,
Who be in dungeons dark.
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A PLACE TO REST
As the day crawls out another night crawls in
Time neither movers nor dies.
It’s the time of day when the lark sings,
the black of night when the curlew cries.
1
There’s rain on the wind, the tears of spirits
The clink of key on iron is near,
A shuttling train passes by on rail,
There’s more than God for man to fear.
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Toward where the evening crow would fly, my thoughts lie,
And like ships in the night they blindly sail,
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Blown by a thought –that breaks the heartOf forty women in Armagh jail.
Oh! And I wish I were with the gentle folk,
Around a hearthened fire where the fairies dance unseen,
Away from the black devils of H-Block hell,
Who torture my heart and haunt my dream.
I would gladly rest where the whin bush grown,
Beneath the rocks where the linnets sing
In Carnmoney Graveyard ‘neath its hill
Fearing not what the day may bring!
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The following poem is quoted from Project Gutenberg’s publication of ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’
by Oscar Wilde, see p. 83: Works Cited. Line references added by myself.
The kindest use a knife, because
The dead so soon grow cold.
THE BALLAD OF READING GAOL
I
He did not wear his scarlet coat,
For blood and wine are red,
And blood and wine were on his hands
When they found him with the dead,
The poor dead woman whom he loved,
And murdered in her bed.
He walked amongst the Trial Men
In a suit of shabby grey;
A cricket cap was on his head,
And his step seemed light and gay;
But I never saw a man who looked
So wistfully at the day.
I never saw a man who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
Which prisoners call the sky,
And at every drifting cloud that went
With sails of silver by.
I walked, with other souls in pain,
Within another ring,
And was wondering if the man had done
A great or little thing,
When a voice behind me whispered low,
“That fellows got to swing.”
Dear Christ! the very prison walls
Suddenly seemed to reel,
And the sky above my head became
Like a casque of scorching steel;
And, though I was a soul in pain,
My pain I could not feel.
I only knew what hunted thought
Quickened his step, and why
He looked upon the garish day
With such a wistful eye;
The man had killed the thing he loved
And so he had to die.
Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!
Some kill their love when they are young,
And some when they are old;
Some strangle with the hands of Lust,
Some with the hands of Gold:
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Some love too little, some too long,
Some sell, and others buy;
Some do the deed with many tears,
And some without a sigh:
For each man kills the thing he loves,
Yet each man does not die.
He does not die a death of shame
On a day of dark disgrace,
Nor have a noose about his neck,
Nor a cloth upon his face,
Nor drop feet foremost through the floor
Into an empty place
He does not sit with silent men
Who watch him night and day;
Who watch him when he tries to weep,
And when he tries to pray;
Who watch him lest himself should rob
The prison of its prey.
He does not wake at dawn to see
Dread figures throng his room,
The shivering Chaplain robed in white,
The Sheriff stern with gloom,
And the Governor all in shiny black,
With the yellow face of Doom.
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He does not rise in piteous haste
To put on convict-clothes,
While some coarse-mouthed Doctor gloats, and
notes
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Each new and nerve-twitched pose,
Fingering a watch whose little ticks
Are like horrible hammer-blows.
He does not know that sickening thirst
That sands one’s throat, before
The hangman with his gardener’s gloves
Slips through the padded door,
And binds one with three leathern thongs,
That the throat may thirst no more.
He does not bend his head to hear
The Burial Office read,
Nor, while the terror of his soul
Tells him he is not dead,
Cross his own coffin, as he moves
Into the hideous shed.
He does not stare upon the air
Through a little roof of glass;
He does not pray with lips of clay
For his agony to pass;
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Nor feel upon his shuddering cheek
The kiss of Caiaphas.
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His last look at the sky?
It is sweet to dance to violins
When Love and Life are fair:
To dance to flutes, to dance to lutes
Is delicate and rare:
But it is not sweet with nimble feet
To dance upon the air!
II
Six weeks our guardsman walked the yard,
In a suit of shabby grey:
His cricket cap was on his head,
And his step seemed light and gay,
But I never saw a man who looked
So wistfully at the day.
I never saw a man who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
Which prisoners call the sky,
And at every wandering cloud that trailed
Its raveled fleeces by.
He did not wring his hands, as do
Those witless men who dare
To try to rear the changeling Hope
In the cave of black Despair:
He only looked upon the sun,
And drank the morning air.
He did not wring his hands nor weep,
Nor did he peek or pine,
But he drank the air as though it held
Some healthful anodyne;
With open mouth he drank the sun
As though it had been wine!
And I and all the souls in pain,
Who tramped the other ring,
Forgot if we ourselves had done
A great or little thing,
And watched with gaze of dull amaze
The man who had to swing.
And strange it was to see him pass
With a step so light and gay,
And strange it was to see him look
So wistfully at the day,
And strange it was to think that he
Had such a debt to pay.
For oak and elm have pleasant leaves
That in the spring-time shoot:
But grim to see is the gallows-tree,
With its adder-bitten root,
And, green or dry, a man must die
Before it bears its fruit!
The loftiest place is that seat of grace
For which all worldlings try:
But who would stand in hempen band
Upon a scaffold high,
And through a murderer’s collar take
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So with curious eyes and sick surmise
We watched him day by day,
And wondered if each one of us
Would end the self-same way,
For none can tell to what red Hell
His sightless soul may stray.
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At last the dead man walked no more
Amongst the Trial Men,
And I knew that he was standing up
In the black dock’s dreadful pen,
And that never would I see his face
In God’s sweet world again.
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1
Like two doomed ships that pass in storm
We had crossed each other’s way:
But we made no sign, we said no word,
We had no word to say;
For we did not meet in the holy night,
But in the shameful day.
A prison wall was round us both,
Two outcast men were we:
The world had thrust us from its heart,
And God from out His care:
And the iron gin that waits for Sin
Had caught us in its snare.
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III
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In Debtors’ Yard the stones are hard,
And the dripping wall is high,
So it was there he took the air
Beneath the leaden sky,
And by each side a Warder walked,
For fear
3 the man might die.
Or else he sat with those who watched
His anguish night and day;
Who watched him when he rose to weep,
And when he crouched to pray;
Who watched him lest himself should rob
Their scaffold of its prey.
The Governor was strong upon
The Regulations Act:
The Doctor said that Death was but
A scientific fact:
And twice a day the Chaplain called
And left a little tract.
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And twice a day he smoked his pipe,
And drank his quart of beer:
His soul was resolute, and held
No hiding-place for fear;
He often said that he was glad
The hangman’s hands were near.
But why he said so strange a thing
No Warder dared to ask:
For he to whom a watcher’s doom
Is given as his task,
Must set a lock upon his lips,
And make his face a mask.
Or else he might be moved, and try
To comfort or console:
And what should Human Pity do
Pent up in Murderers’ Hole?
What word of grace in such a place
Could help a brother’s soul?
With slouch and swing around the ring
We trod the Fool’s Parade!
We did not care: we knew we were
The Devil’s Own Brigade:
And shaven head and feet of lead
Make a merry masquerade.
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We tore the tarry rope to shreds
With blunt and bleeding nails;
We rubbed the doors, and scrubbed the floors,45
And cleaned the shining rails:
And, rank by rank, we soaped the plank,
And clattered with the pails.
We sewed the sacks, we broke the stones,
We turned the dusty drill:
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We banged the tins, and bawled the hymns,
And sweated on the mill:
But in the heart of every man
Terror was lying still.
So still it lay that every day
Crawled like a weed-clogged wave:
And we forgot the bitter lot
That waits for fool and knave,
Till once, as we tramped in from work,
We passed an open grave.
With yawning mouth the yellow hole
Gaped for a living thing;
The very mud cried out for blood
To the thirsty asphalte ring:
And we knew that ere one dawn grew fair
Some prisoner had to swing.
Right in we went, with soul intent
On Death and Dread and Doom:
The hangman, with his little bag,
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Went shuffling through the gloom
And each man trembled as he crept
Into his numbered tomb.
That night the empty corridors
Were full of forms of Fear,
And up and down the iron town
Stole feet we could not hear,
And through the bars that hide the stars
White faces seemed to peer.
He lay as one who lies and dreams
In a pleasant meadow-land,
The watcher watched him as he slept,
And could not understand
How one could sleep so sweet a sleep
With a hangman close at hand?
But there is no sleep when men must weep
Who never yet have wept:
So we—the fool, the fraud, the knave—
That endless vigil kept,
And through each brain on hands of pain
Another’s terror crept.
Alas! it is a fearful thing
To feel another’s guilt!
For, right within, the sword of Sin
Pierced to its poisoned hilt,
And as molten lead were the tears we shed
For the blood we had not spilt.
The Warders with their shoes of felt
Crept by each padlocked door,
And peeped and saw, with eyes of awe,
Grey figures on the floor,
And wondered why men knelt to pray
Who never prayed before.
All through the night we knelt and prayed,
Mad mourners of a corpse!
The troubled plumes of midnight were
The plumes upon a hearse:
And bitter wine upon a sponge
Was the savior of Remorse.
The cock crew, the red cock crew,
But never came the day:
And crooked shape of Terror crouched,
In the corners where we lay:
And each evil sprite that walks by night
Before us seemed to play.
They glided past, they glided fast,
Like travelers through a mist:
They mocked the moon in a rigadoon
Of delicate turn and twist,
And with formal pace and loathsome grace
The phantoms kept their tryst.
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With mop and mow, we saw them go,
Slim shadows hand in hand:
About, about, in ghostly rout
They trod a saraband:
And the damned grotesques made arabesques,125
Like the wind upon the sand!
With the pirouettes of marionettes,
They tripped on pointed tread:
But with flutes of Fear they filled the ear,
As their grisly masque they led,
And loud they sang, and loud they sang,
For they sang to wake the dead.
“Oho!” they cried, “The world is wide,
But fettered limbs go lame!
And once, or twice, to throw the dice
Is a gentlemanly game,
But he does not win who plays with Sin
In the secret House of Shame.”
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The morning wind began to moan,
But still the night went on:
Through its giant loom the web of gloom
Crept till each thread was spun:
And, as we prayed, we grew afraid
Of the Justice of the Sun.
The moaning wind went wandering round
The weeping prison-wall:
Till like a wheel of turning-steel
We felt the minutes crawl:
O moaning wind! what had we done
To have such a seneschal?
At last I saw the shadowed bars
Like a lattice wrought in lead,
Move right across the whitewashed wall
That faced my three-plank bed,
And I knew that somewhere in the world
God’s dreadful dawn was red.
At six o’clock we cleaned our cells,
At seven all was still,
But the sough and swing of a mighty wing
The prison seemed to fill,
He did not pass in purple pomp,
Nor ride a moon-white steed.
Three yards of cord and a sliding board
Are all the gallows’ need:
So with rope of shame the Herald came
To do the secret deed.
We were as men who through a fen
Of filthy darkness grope:
We did not dare to breathe a prayer,
Or give our anguish scope:
Something was dead in each of us,
And what was dead was Hope.
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No things of air these antics were
That frolicked with such glee:
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To men whose lives were held in gyves,
And whose feet might not go free,
Ah! wounds of Christ! they were living things,
Most terrible to see.
Around, around, they waltzed and wound;
Some wheeled in smirking pairs:
With the mincing step of demirep
Some sidled up the stairs:
And with subtle sneer, and fawning leer,
Each helped us at our prayers.
For the Lord of Death with icy breath
Had entered in to kill.
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For Man’s grim Justice goes its way,
And will not swerve aside:
It slays the weak, it slays the strong,
It has a deadly stride:
With iron heel it slays the strong,
The monstrous parricide!
We waited for the stroke of eight:
Each tongue was thick with thirst:
For the stroke of eight is the stroke of Fate
That makes a man accursed,
And Fate will use a running noose
For the best man and the worst.
We had no other thing to do,
Save to wait for the sign to come:
So, like things of stone in a valley lone,
Quiet we sat and dumb:
But each man’s heart beat thick and quick
Like a madman on a drum!
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With sudden shock the prison-clock
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Smote on the shivering air,
And from all the gaol rose up a wail
Of impotent despair,
Like the sound that frightened marshes hear
From a leper in his lair.
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And as one sees most fearful things
In the crystal of a dream,
We saw the greasy hempen rope
Hooked to the blackened beam,
And heard the prayer the hangman’s snare
Strangled into a scream.
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And all the woe that moved him so
That he gave that bitter cry,
And the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats,
None knew so well as I:
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For he who lives more lives than one
More deaths than one must die.
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IV
There is no chapel on the day
On which they hang a man:
The Chaplain’s heart is far too sick,
Or his face is far too wan,
Or there is that written in his eyes
Which none should look upon.
So they kept us close till nigh on noon,
And then they rang the bell,
And the Warders with their jingling keys
Opened each listening cell,
And down the iron stair we tramped,
Each from his separate Hell.
Out into God’s sweet air we went,
But not in wonted way,
For this man’s face was white with fear,
And that man’s face was grey,
And I never saw sad men who looked
So wistfully at the day.
I never saw sad men who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
We prisoners called the sky,
And at every careless cloud that passed
In happy freedom by.
But there were those amongst us all
Who walked with downcast head,
And knew that, had each got his due,
They should have died instead:
He had but killed a thing that lived
Whilst they had killed the dead.
For he who sins a second time
Wakes a dead soul to pain,
And draws it from its spotted shroud,
And makes it bleed again,
And makes it bleed great gouts of blood
And makes it bleed in vain!
Like ape or clown, in monstrous garb
With crooked arrows starred,
Silently we went round and round
The slippery asphalte yard;
Silently we went round and round,
And no man spoke a word.
Silently we went round and round,
And through each hollow mind
The memory of dreadful things
Rushed like a dreadful wind,
And Horror stalked before each man,
And terror crept behind.
The Warders strutted up and down,
And kept their herd of brutes,
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Their uniforms were spick and span,
And they wore their Sunday suits,
But we knew the work they had been at
By the quicklime on their boots.
For where a grave had opened wide,
There was no grave at all:
Only a stretch of mud and sand
By the hideous prison-wall,
And a little heap of burning lime,
That the man should have his pall.
For he has a pall, this wretched man,
Such as few men can claim:
Deep down below a prison-yard,
Naked for greater shame,
He lies, with fetters on each foot,
Wrapt in a sheet of flame!
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And all the while the burning lime
Eats flesh and bone away,
It eats the brittle bone by night,
And the soft flesh by the day,
It eats the flesh and bones by turns,
But it eats the heart alway.
For three long years they will not sow
Or root or seedling there:
For three long years the unblessed spot
Will sterile be and bare,
And look upon the wondering sky
With unreproachful stare.
They think a murderer’s heart would taint
Each simple seed they sow.
It is not true! God’s kindly earth
Is kindlier than men know,
And the red rose would but blow more red,
The white rose whiter blow.
Out of his mouth a red, red rose!
Out of his heart a white!
For who can say by what strange way,
Christ brings his will to light,
Since the barren staff the pilgrim bore
Bloomed in the great Pope’s sight?
But neither milk-white rose nor red
May bloom in prison air;
The shard, the pebble, and the flint,
Are what they give us there:
For flowers have been known to heal
A common man’s despair.
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So never will wine-red rose or white,
Petal by petal, fall
On that stretch of mud and sand that lies
By the hideous prison-wall,
To tell the men who tramp the yard
That God’s Son died for all.
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Yet though the hideous prison-wall
Still hems him round and round,
And a spirit man not walk by night
That is with fetters bound,
And a spirit may not weep that lies
In such unholy ground,
He is at peace—this wretched man—
At peace, or will be soon:
There is no thing to make him mad,
Nor does Terror walk at noon,
For the lampless Earth in which he lies
Has neither Sun nor Moon.
They hanged him as a beast is hanged:
They did not even toll
A reguiem that might have brought
Rest to his startled soul,
But hurriedly they took him out,
And hid him in a hole.
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They stripped him of his canvas clothes,
And gave him to the flies;
They mocked the swollen purple throat
And the stark and staring eyes:
And with laughter loud they heaped the shroud125
In which their convict lies.
The Chaplain would not kneel to pray
By his dishonored grave:
Nor mark it with that blessed Cross
That Christ for sinners gave,
Because the man was one of those
Whom Christ came down to save.
Yet all is well; he has but passed
To Life’s appointed bourne:
And alien tears will fill for him
Pity’s long-broken urn,
For his mourner will be outcast men,
And outcasts always mourn.
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V
I know not whether Laws be right,
Or whether Laws be wrong;
All that we know who lie in gaol
Is that the wall is strong;
And that each day is like a year,
A year whose days are long.
But this I know, that every Law
That men have made for Man,
Since first Man took his brother’s life,
And the sad world began,
But straws the wheat and saves the chaff
With a most evil fan.
This too I know—and wise it were
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If each could know the same—
That every prison that men build
Is built with bricks of shame,
And bound with bars lest Christ should see
How men their brothers maim.
With bars they blur the gracious moon,
And blind the goodly sun:
And they do well to hide their Hell,
For in it things are done
That Son of God nor son of Man
Ever should look upon!
The vilest deeds like poison weeds
Bloom well in prison-air:
It is only what is good in Man
That wastes and withers there:
Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate,
And the Warder is Despair
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For they starve the little frightened child
Till it weeps both night and day:
And they scourge the weak, and flog the fool,
And gibe the old and grey,
And some grow mad, and all grow bad,
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And none a word may say.
Each narrow cell in which we dwell
Is foul and dark latrine,
And the fetid breath of living Death
Chokes up each grated screen,
And all, but Lust, is turned to dust
In Humanity’s machine.
The brackish water that we drink
Creeps with a loathsome slime,
And the bitter bread they weigh in scales
Is full of chalk and lime,
And Sleep will not lie down, but walks
Wild-eyed and cries to Time.
But though lean Hunger and green Thirst
Like asp with adder fight,
We have little care of prison fare,
For what chills and kills outright
Is that every stone one lifts by day
Becomes one’s heart by night.
With midnight always in one’s heart,
And twilight in one’s cell,
We turn the crank, or tear the rope,
Each in his separate Hell,
And the silence is more awful far
Than the sound of a brazen bell.
And never a human voice comes near
To speak a gentle word:
And the eye that watches through the door
Is pitiless and hard:
And by all forgot, we rot and rot,
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With soul and body marred.
And thus we rust Life’s iron chain
Degraded and alone:
And some men curse, and some men weep,
And some men make no moan:
But God’s eternal Laws are kind
And break the heart of stone.
And every human heart that breaks,
In prison-cell or yard,
Is as that broken box that gave
Its treasure to the Lord,
And filled the unclean leper’s house
With the scent of costliest nard.
And cleanse from every blot of blood
The hand that held the knife.
And with tears of blood he cleansed the hand,
The hand that held the steel:
For only blood can wipe out blood,
And only tears can heal:
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And the crimson stain that was of Cain
Became Christ’s snow-white seal.
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VI
In Reading gaol by Reading town
There is a pit of shame,
And in it lies a wretched man
Eaten by teeth of flame,
In burning winding-sheet he lies,
And his grave has got no name.
Ah! happy day they whose hearts can break
And peace of pardon win!
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How else may man make straight his plan
And cleanse his soul from Sin?
How else but through a broken heart
May Lord Christ enter in?
And he of the swollen purple throat.
And the stark and staring eyes,
Waits for the holy hands that took
The Thief to Paradise;
And a broken and a contrite heart
The Lord will not despise.
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And there, till Christ call forth the dead,
In silence let him lie:
No need to waste the foolish tear,
Or heave the windy sigh:
The man had killed the thing he loved,
And so he had to die.
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And all men kill the thing they love,
By all let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!
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The man in red who reads the Law
Gave him three weeks of life,
Three little weeks in which to heal
His soul of his soul’s strife,
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The following poem is quoted from The Poetry Foundation’s publication of ‘The Prisoner of Chillon’
by Lord Byron, see p. 82: Works Cited.
THE PRISONER OF CHILLON
MY hair is gray, but not with years,
Nor grew it white
In a single night,
As men’s have grown from sudden fears;
My limbs are bow’d, though not with toil,
But rusted with a vile repose,
For they have been a dungeon’s spoil,
And mine has been the fate of those
To whom the goodly earth and air
Are bann’d, and barr’d—forbidden fare;
But this was for my father’s faith
I suffer’d chains and courted death;
That father perish’d at the stake
For tenets he would not forsake;
And for the same his lineal race
In darkness found a dwelling-place.
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We were seven—who now are one,
Six in youth, and one in age,
Finish’d as they had begun,
Proud of Persecution’s rage;
One in fire, and two in field
Their belief with blood have seal’d,
Dying as their father died,
For the God their foes denied;
Three were in a dungeon cast,
Of whom this wreck is left the last.
There are seven pillars of Gothic mould,
In Chillon’s dungeons deep and old,
There are seven columns, massy and gray,
Dim with a dull imprison’d ray,
A sunbeam which hath lost its way,
And through the crevice and the cleft
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Of the thick wall is fallen and left;
Creeping o’er the floor so damp,
Like a marsh’s meteor lamp.
And in each pillar there is a ring,
And in each ring there is a chain;
That iron is a cankering thing,
For in these limbs its teeth remain,
With marks that will not wear away,
Till I have done with this new day,
Which now is painful to these eyes,
Which have not seen the sun so rise
For years—I cannot count them o’er,
I lost their long and heavy score,
When my last brother droop’d and died,
And I lay living by his side.
They chain’d us each to a column stone,
And we were three—yet, each alone;
We could not move a single pace,
We could not see each other’s face,
But with that pale and livid light
That made us strangers in our sight:
And thus together—yet apart,
Fetter’d in hand, but join’d in heart,
’Twas still some solace, in the dearth
Of the pure elements of earth,
To hearken to each other’s speech,
And each turn comforter to each
With some new hope, or legend old,
Or song heroically bold;
But even these at length grew cold,
Our voices took a dreary tone,
An echo of the dungeon stone,
A grating sound, not full and free,
As they of yore were wont to be;
It might be fancy, but to me
They never sounded like our own.
I was the eldest of the three,
And to uphold and cheer the rest
I ought to do—and did my best;
And each did well in his degree.
The youngest, whom my father loved,
Because our mother’s brow was given
To him, with eyes as blue as heaven—
For him my soul was sorely moved;
And truly might it be distress’d
To see such bird in such a nest;
For he was beautiful as day
(When day was beautiful to me
As to young eagles, being free)—
A polar day, which will not see
A sunset till its summer’s gone,
Its sleepless summer of long light,
The snow-clad offspring of the sun:
And thus he was as pure and bright,
And in his natural spirit gay,
With tears for nought but others’ ills;
And then they flow’d like mountain rills,
Unless he could assuage the woe
Which he abhorr’d to view below.
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The other was as pure of mind,
But form’d to combat with his kind;
Strong in his frame, and of a mood
Which ’gainst the world in war had stood,
And perish’d in the foremost rank
With joy:—but not in chains to pine:
His spirit wither’d with their clank,
I saw it silently decline—
And so perchance in sooth did mine:
But yet I forced it on to cheer
Those relics of a home so dear.
He was a hunter of the hills,
Had follow’d there the deer and wolf;
To him this dungeon was a gulf,
And fetter’d feet the worst of ills.
Lake Leman lies by Chillon’s walls:
A thousand feet in depth below
Its massy waters meet and flow;
Thus much the fathom-line was sent
From Chillon’s snow-white battlement
Which round about the wave inthrals:
A double dungeon wall and wave
Have made—and like a living grave.
Below the surface of the lake
The dark vault lies wherein we lay,
We heard it ripple night and day;
Sounding o’er our heads it knock’d;
And I have felt the winter’s spray
Wash through the bars when winds were
high
And wanton in the happy sky;
And then the very rock hath rock’d,
And I have felt it shake, unshock’d
Because I could have smiled to see
The death that would have set me free.
I said my nearer brother pined,
I said his mighty heart declined,
He loathed and put away his food;
It was not that ’twas coarse and rude,
For we were used to hunter’s fare,
And for the like had little care.
The milk drawn from the mountain goat
Was changed for water from the moat,
Our bread was such as captives’ tears
Have moistened many a thousand years,
Since man first pent his fellow men
Like brutes within an iron den;
But what were these to us or him?
These wasted not his heart or limb;
My brother’s soul was of that mould
Which in a palace had grown cold,
Had his free breathing been denied
The range of the steep mountain’s side.
But why delay the truth?—he died.
I saw, and could not hold his head,
Nor reach his dying hand—nor dead,—
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Though hard I strove, but strove in vain
To rend and gnash my bonds in twain.
He died,—and they unlock’d his chain,
And scoop’d for him a shallow grave
Even from the cold earth of our cave.
I begg’d them, as a boon, to lay
His corse in dust whereon the day
Might shine—it was a foolish thought,
But then within my brain it wrought,
That even in death his freeborn breast
In such a dungeon could not rest.
I might have spared my idle prayer;
They coldly laugh’d—and laid him there:
The flat and turfless earth above
The being we so much did love;
His empty chain above it leant,
Such murder’s fitting monument!
But he, the favourite and the flower,
Most cherish’d since his natal hour,
His mother’s image in fair face,
The infant love of all his race,
His martyr’d father’s dearest thought,
My latest care for whom I sought
To hoard my life, that his might be
Less wretched now, and one day free;
He, too, who yet had held untired
A spirit natural or inspired—
He, too, was struck, and day by day
Was wither’d on the stalk away.
Oh, God! it is a fearful thing
To see the human soul take wing
In any shape, in any mood:—
I’ve seen it rushing forth in blood,
I’ve seen it on the breaking ocean
Strive with a swoln convulsive motion,
I’ve seen the sick and ghastly bed
Of Sin delirious with its dread:
But these were horrors—this was woe
Unmix’d with such—but sure and slow.
He faded, and so calm and meek,
So softly worn, so sweetly weak,
So tearless, yet so tender—kind,
And grieved for those he left behind;
With all the while a cheek whose bloom
Was as a mockery of the tomb,
Whose tints as gently sunk away
As a departing rainbow’s ray;
An eye of most transparent light,
That almost made the dungeon bright;
And not a word of murmur, not
A groan o’er his untimely lot,—
A little talk of better days,
A little hope my own to raise,
For I was sunk in silence—lost
In this last loss, of all the most;
And then the sighs he would suppress
Of fainting nature’s feebleness,
More slowly drawn, grew less and less.
I listen’d, but I could not hear—
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I call’d, for I was wild with fear;
I knew ’t was hopeless, but my dread
Would not be thus admonishèd.
I call’d, and thought I heard a sound—
I burst my chain with one strong bound,
And rush’d to him:—I found him not,
I only stirr’d in this black spot,
I only lived, I only drew
The accursèd breath of dungeon-dew;
The last—the sole—the dearest link
Between me and the eternal brink,
Which bound me to my failing race,
Was broken in this fatal place.
One on the earth, and one beneath—
My brothers—both had ceased to breathe:
I took that hand which lay so still,
Alas! my own was full as chill;
I had not strength to stir, or strive,
But felt that I was still alive—
A frantic feeling, when we know
That what we love shall ne’er be so.
I know not why
I could not die,
I had no earthly hope—but faith,
And that forbade a selfish death.
What next befell me then and there
I know not well—I never knew;
First came the loss of light, and air,
And then of darkness too:
I had no thought, no feeling—none—
Among the stones, I stood a stone,
And was, scarce conscious what I wist,
As shrubless crags within the mist;
For all was blank, and bleak, and gray;
It was not night—it was not day;
It was not even the dungeon-light,
So hateful to my heavy sight,
But vacancy absorbing space,
And fixedness—without a place;
There were no stars, no earth, no time,
No check, no change, no good, no crime,
But silence, and a stirless breath
Which neither was of life nor death;
A sea of stagnant idleness,
Blind, boundless, mute, and motionless!
A light broke in upon my brain,—
It was the carol of a bird;
It ceased, and then it came again,
The sweetest song ear ever heard,
And mine was thankful till my eyes
Ran over with the glad surprise,
And they that moment could not see
I was the mate of misery.
But then by dull degrees came back
My senses to their wonted track;
I saw the dungeon walls and floor
Close slowly round me as before,
I saw the glimmer of the sun
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Creeping as it before had done,
But through the crevice where it came
That bird was perched, as fond and tame,
And tamer than upon the tree;
A lovely bird, with azure wings,
And song that said a thousand things,
And seemed to say them all for me!
I never saw its like before,
I ne’er shall see its likeness more;
It seemed like me to want a mate,
But was not half so desolate,
And it was come to love me when
None lived to love me so again,
And cheering from my dungeon’s brink,
Had brought me back to feel and think.
I know not if it late were free,
Or broke its cage to perch on mine,
But knowing well captivity,
Sweet bird! I could not wish for thine!
Or if it were, in wingèd guise,
A visitant from Paradise;
For—Heaven forgive that thought! the
while
Which made me both to weep and smile—
I sometimes deem’d that it might be
My brother’s soul come down to me;
But then at last away it flew,
And then ’twas mortal well I knew,
For he would never thus have flown,
And left me twice so doubly lone,
Lone—as the corse within its shroud,
Lone—as a solitary cloud,
A single cloud on a sunny day,
While all the rest of heaven is clear,
A frown upon the atmosphere
That hath no business to appear
When skies are blue and earth is gay.
A kind of change came in my fate,
My keepers grew compassionate;
I know not what had made them so,
They were inured to sights of woe,
But so it was:—my broken chain
With links unfasten’d did remain,
And it was liberty to stride
Along my cell from side to side,
And up and down, and then athwart,
And tread it over every part;
And round the pillars one by one,
Returning where my walk begun,
Avoiding only, as I trod,
My brothers’ graves without a sod;
For if I thought with heedless tread
My steps profaned their lowly bed,
My breath came gaspingly and thick,
And my crush’d heart fell blind and sick.
I made a footing in the wall,
It was not therefrom to escape,
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For I had buried one and all
Who loved me in a human shape;
And the whole earth would henceforth be
A wider prison unto me:
No child, no sire, no kin had I,
No partner in my misery;
I thought of this, and I was glad,
For thought of them had made me mad;
But I was curious to ascend
To my barr’d windows, and to bend
Once more, upon the mountains high,
The quiet of a loving eye.
I saw them—and they were the same.
They were not changed like me in frame;
I saw their thousand years of snow
On high—their wide long lake below,
And the blue Rhone in fullest flow;
I heard the torrents leap and gush
O’er channell’d rock and broken bush;
I saw the white-wall’d distant town,
And whiter sails go skimming down;
And then there was a little isle,
Which in my very face did smile,
The only one in view;
A small green isle, it seem’d no more,
Scarce broader than my dungeon floor,
But in it there were three tall trees,
And o’er it blew the mountain breeze,
And by it there were waters flowing,
And on it there were young flowers
growing
Of gentle breath and hue.
The fish swam by the castle wall,
And they seem’d joyous each and all;
The eagle rode the rising blast,
Methought he never flew so fast
As then to me he seem’d to fly;
And then new tears came in my eye,
And I felt troubled and would fain
I had not left my recent chain.
And when I did descend again,
The darkness of my dim abode
Fell on me as a heavy load;
It was as is a new-dug grave,
Closing o’er one we sought to save;
And yet my glance, too much opprest,
Had almost need of such a rest.
It might be months, or years, or days—
I kept no count, I took no note,
I had no hope my eyes to raise,
And clear them of their dreary mote.
At last men came to set me free;
I ask’d not why, and reck’d not where,
It was at length the same to me,
Fetter’d or fetterless to be,
I learn’d to love despair.
And thus when they appear’d at last,
And all my bonds aside were cast,
These heavy walls to me had grown
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A hermitage—and all my own!
And half I felt as they were come
To tear me from a second home:
With spiders I had friendship made,
And watch’d them in their sullen trade,
Had seen the mice by moonlight play,
And why should I feel less than they?
We were all inmates of one place,
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And I, the monarch of each race,
Had power to kill—yet, strange to tell!
In quiet we had learn’d to dwell—
My very chains and I grew friends,
So much a long communion tends
To make us what we are:—even I
Regain’d my freedom with a sigh.
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Secondary Information
1.
Stetler, Russell. “The Battle of Bogside”. Photograph. 1970. The Battle of Bogside. CAIN. Web. 13 Mar. 2014.
2.
“The H-Blocks of ‘The Maze’prison”. Photograph. 1976. Ulster Museum, Belfast. Paddy’s Wagon Blogspot.
Web. 17 Mar. 2014.
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3.
Unnamed photographer for US military. "Back to a Coast Guard assault transport comes this Marine after two
days and nights of Hell on the beach of Eniwetok in the Marshall Islands. His face is grimey with coral dust but
the light of battle stays in his eyes." Photograph. 1944. US Government Archives. World War II Photographs.
Web. 21 Mar. 2014.
4.
Schiele, Egon. “The Single Orange Was the Only Light”. Sketch/Painting. 1912. Egon Schiele Life and Work
Blogspot. Web. 12 May 2014.
115
5.
Schiele, Egon. “Die Tür in das Offene”. Sketch/Painting. 1912. Egon Schiele Life and Work Blogspot. Web. 12
May 2014.
6.
“Reading Gaol in 1844”. Print. 1844. University of Reading. Web. 2 May 2014.
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7.
Sameli, Ioan. “Chillon’s Dungeon”. Photograph. 2010. Exploring Castles. Web. 23 Mar. 2014.