When the first wrong was done to the first Indian, I was there. When the first slaver put out for the Congo, I stood on her deck. Am I not in your bo… - Stephen Vincent Benét

For the man crucified on the crossed machine guns Without name, without resurrection, without stars, His dark head heavy with death and his flesh long sour With the smell of his many prisons — John Smith, John Doe, John Nobody — oh, crack your mind for his name! Faceless as water, naked as the dust, Dishonored as the earth the gas-shells poison And barbarous with portent. This is he. This is the man they ate at the green table Putting their gloves on ere they touched the meat. This is the fruit of war, the fruit of peace, The ripeness of invention, the new lamb, The answer to the wisdom of the wise. And still he hangs, and still he will not die And still, on the steel city of our years The light falls and the terrible blood streams down.

I see that I've said something you don't like, Something uncouth and bold and terrifying, And yet, I'll tell you this: It won't be till each one of us is willing, Not you, not me, but every one of us, To hang upon a cross for every man Who suffers, starves and dies, Fight his sore battles as they were our own, And help him from the darkness and the mire, That there will be no crosses and no tyrants, No Herods and no slaves.

I crawled. I could not speak or see Save dimly. The ice glared like fire, A long bright Hell of choking cold, And each vein was a tautened wire, Throbbing with torture — and I crawled. My hands were wounds. So I attained The second Hell.