Ringed with a scum of chicken-necked bosses
he toys with the tributes of half-men.
— From “The Stalin Epigram” by Osip Mandelstam

Have you no sense of decency, sir?— Joseph Welch

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I write to you from a cell in which I’ve locked
myself inside and given you the key, more as a symbol
than anything else since I know you would let me go
for now, but where would I go? Where would I be?
Behind a wall you’re building on the very soil
that’s supposed to welcome “the huddled masses”
at its “golden door”? But that’s not free. I hear witnesses
in the silence that archives their voices. See how
they come back to me like birds to a favorite tree,
this one in particular from the martyred poet
and courage teacher, Osip Mandelstam: “No longer
can I feel the ground beneath me.” Every tyrant resurrects
like…