A foam of lightning breaks on the barred pane. He shudders: voltage......stretches you apart As it does bleeding roots, and trunks that start And twist alive and writhe up off the plain Like threads of tortured silver..... But the guards— Monstrous deft dolls that move as on a string— In wonted haste to finish with this thing, Turn faces blanker than asphalted yards.
They hear the shriek that tore out of its sheath But as a feeble moan... yet dare not breathe, Who stare there at him, arching—like a tree When the winds wrench it and the earth holds tight— To fuse in flaming circuit with the night His soul, expanding with white agony.
LOLA RIDGE.