“For the women who mourn their dead in the secret night,
For the children taught to keep quiet, the old children,
The children spat-on at school.
For the wrecked laboratory,
The gutted house, the dunged picture, the pissed-in well
The naked corpse of Knowledge flung in the square
And no man lifting a hand and no man speaking.”

Litany for Dictatorships (1935)

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Stephen Vincent Benét 102
poet, short story writer, novelist 1898–1943

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