Bang Kwang Prison

The guards bring forth the wretched soul, who shakes like brittle leaves,

They march him forward, barefoot on the earth.

In twenty years of torture he has had no day’s reprieve

And he seems not like a man for man has worth.

 

He has left: a little sanity, his limbs, his organs, rags;

All else he might have had died long ago.

No dignity or vanity prevents him thus to sag

With all his being, leaving evil home.

 

With one key and a twist he could be given all the world,

Instead he stumbles slowly t’ward the end.

He thinks how black and rotten has his bud of fate unfurled,

And as he does his single thought descends:

 

‘Hold on just one minute more;

Don’t take me now, not yet.’

He fights them, tooth, nail, bone, and claw,

‘Just give me just one minute more,

Don’t soak my blood into the dust

Like rust unwanted on the floor,

Just blindly change your minds

And lead me back up to the prison door

Or leave me here to wave goodbye

The sky above this hopeless shore

Just let me be for just one minute more.’

 

He snatches, grabs the gate, but will find no compassion here;

His fading mind and muscles weaken fast.

They pull away and laugh and say, ‘Old man you make it worse.’

But the will that is his soul will not yet pass:

 

‘No please, allow a little time,

It’s all I ever had.

Don’t end me for my long-lost crime,

There is no rhyme no reason,

Drugs or robbery or treason,

Never murder, never this,

I’ve given all I have to give,

Justice fails, just let me live,

Don’t ask me- I know not what for:

I live for just one moment more.’

 

One finger hooks the wire mesh; the thought and he are one.

His mind and soul are in that muscle torn.

And though he feels the hopelessness of life he fights still on,

He fights to live a single minute more.

 

Just one minute more of life;

Just one minute more of pain and fear;

Just one minute more behind the iron gates.

Just one minute, even here;

Just one minute more of hate and tears;

Just anything;

Just form;

Just thought;

Just life.

 

Please Satan, take him back into his worldly tomb of steel-

Just one minute more of you is all he asks.

Just don’t take him to the garden and while laughing make him kneel,

As to crumble him to dust once he has passed.

 

‘Please,’ he prays in screams, ‘just let me have one minute more of hell

Before forever I am cast into the void.

Just one minute where to think on, that although I’ve not lived well,

I still have lived;

And now I am destroyed.’