A row of bearded fellows … four …
In hand-cuffs … chained to an iron bar …
Their bare feet straining to the slimy floor …
Stripped to their ragged underwear …
Their bruises not yet hardened to a scar …
Four bearded chins upon four breasts in prayer.

The twilight made by one high oblong's dim
On him … and him … and him … and him.

Perhaps no matter … there's not much to see …
No blanket on the cold and clammy bricks …
No bread … no pitcher … bowl … or pail …
But once in twenty-four or thirty-six
Slow hours of this well conducted jail,
The keepers come with cups of water … four …
At which each chained man licks …
Come with four crusts for jaws …
At which each chained man gnaws …
(Chained man? … chained dog?! … chained bear?!)
Between the cursings … clubbings … kicks.
The keepers go … they climb the long stone stair …
And all below's the same once more—
Four bearded chins upon four breasts in prayer.

It is a quiet place …
Quiet for four … or three … or two … or one.
A little moaning … “Father” … “God” … “thy face,”
And … “Will be done” … “thy will be done!”
That's all …
Except at times the free
Far wash and rumble of the western sea
Against the rocks beside the dungeon wall.
For though the dank brine seep and seep and seep …
And crumble the mortar … it's so silently,
At least when four are standing in their sleep.
Quiet, so quiet, while the thunders pass,
And the great winds of sunset sweep
Over the prison-island Alcatraz.

Quiet, so quiet … where each stands,
Two hands strung up, beside two strung-up hands …
They do not hear
The statesmen, far and near,
In hills, and fields, and towns above,
Proclaiming liberty to all the lands
And all the inhabitants thereof!

No motion in this damp, chill under-air …
A kind of stale and stagnant fog …
For ages pent …
The Spaniards brought and housed it there
Of old from some Peruvian bog …
And now it's poisoned by such excrement
As hollow hunger and dry thirst can spare
Of four men in a row, half-spent—
Four bearded chins upon four breasts in prayer.

Why bother?—
There has been many another …
For instance, Bonnevard and brother …
Isaac of York and sundry Jews
Who got the rack or screws …
And Torquemada's heretics,
For dabbling in forbidden tricks,
Were put to boil in Christian oil,
Or roasted over consecrated sticks.
There has been many another—
Why bother?

A row of bearded fellows … four …
And all because
So gentle, and long-suffering, and odd …
They had an understanding with their God …
They had the will and strength to keep the clause …
To bear … and bear … and bear … and bear …
They would not give their bodies up to war …
Four bearded chins on four dead breasts in prayer.