The Execution of Donald F.

Perhaps he didn’t allow himself such freedom, crouched in a gritty cell, keepers dishing him dirt and rancid drink, gasoline bombs rattling off in succession in the distance. The break with the past was too keen. The smoky light flashed through the diminished window, needling him with its mounting ramifications. Was this the best way? To flay the insect on the open stove and simmer, to the shock of perpetual tremors? The shells must be cracked when ripe. Bananas clustered on leafy boughs in the tropics, gummy yellow with green nibs, the moist, fibrous soil held in by spiraling undergrowth--he would have retrieved these, multiplying them in the endless mental desert. But his cell was too constricted. The masonry, rough, chiseled granite, spoke seriously of archaic colonial doctrines. Tin and palmwood shanties, happy treaties would be written in these, canaries pecking at grain on the floor from sisal sacks. Such espionage would be simple, perfectly noble. Electric chairs would be stored in forsaken warehouses, the silent autocrat pronouncing benevolent mandates with cheerless smiles from his straw throne. Such salty libations, dissolved by the merciless sun, the ancient gods would love these, laughing on shattered sepulchers.
--January 15, 1990*


* Inspired by an article in The Boston Globe, January 15, 1990:
Headline: “Soviet spy for the US sentenced to die, Pravda reports”
By David Remnick, Washington Post

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