Until Today I Hadn'T Thought About Anthony Hecht Poem by Edward Mayes

Until today I hadn't thought about Anthony Hecht
Arriving at Flossenbürg two weeks too late
To save Dietrich Bonhoeffer, his neck as
Stretched as the carpenter's in the photo
The carabinieri showed us, a suicide with
A cigarette still stuck to his lower lip,
As if I could have just slipped past guards,
Disguised as a poet, as if the empty could
Be guillotined from the full, as if these stanzas
Could be the rooms to where we would
Then go to be free, that that couldn't happen,
But that when we weigh ourselves again, will we
Find our tare, the true weight of a soul,
A shard, to throw the mattress on the ground
And us on it, dreaming of Appomattox or
What we will never become, the stalwart
Among us reciting Attic poetry in the basements,
Or what are meant to be only words,
A great purge of words, whether we find a word
To save us from other words, or whether—
Just like that—amid the ligature, amid the snap.