When the Cock Crows
By Arturo Giovannitti
To the Memory of Frank Little, Hanged at Midnight.
I.
Six Men drove up to his house at midnight and woke the
poor woman who kept it.
And asked her: "Where is the man who spoke against
the war and insulted the army?"
And the old woman took fear of the men and the hour,
and showed them the room where he slept,
And when they made sure it was he whom they wanted,
they dragged him out of his bed with blows, tho'
he was willing to walk,
And they fastened his hands on his back, and they drove
him across the black night,
And there was no moon and no stars and not any visible
thing, and even the faces of the men were eaten
with the leprosy of the dark, for they were masked
with black shame,
And nothing showed in the gloom save the glow of his
eyes and the flame of his soul that scorched the
face of Death.
II.
No One gave witness of what they did to him, after
they took him away, until a dog barked at his
corpse,
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