The Trial of a Man
The Trial of a Man - meaning Summary
Guilt as Public Sentence
The poem turns an ordinary domestic morning into a surreal scene of accusation and punishment. Everyday details—the milkman, coffee, newspaper—become heralds of doom as a polished authority enters and a private trial unfolds. The addressed figure is imagined as condemned, physically and mentally confined, awaiting electrocutive fate. The poem explores overwhelming guilt, external judgment made intimate, and the collapse of routine into existential terror.
Read Complete AnalysesThe ordinary milkman brought that dawn Of destiny, delivered to the door In square hermetic bottles, while the sun Ruled decree of doomsday on the floor. The morning paper clocked the headline hour You drank your coffee lke original sin, And at the jet-plane anger of God's roar Got up to let the suave blue policeman in. Impaled upon a stern angelic stare You were condemned to serve the legal limit And burn to death within your neon hell. Now, disciplined in the strict ancestral chair, You sit, solemn-eyed, about to vomit, The future an electrode in your skull.
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