Little Execution Poem

---

                   On peut tuer un homme

                   mais pas ses idées.*

                                       — Thomas Sankara (1949-1987)

They lowered a bucket of mussels

down to my stomach

where a table had been set

with white cloth and a single candle.

My starred beret drank a glass of champagne

though it preferred water.

Whoever is afraid of silence

will never hear it.

I see night leaning on the sun.

I see a tree leaning on an axe.

*One can kill a man but not his ideas.