Jack Ellyat, in prison deep in the South, Gaunt, bearded, dirty old man with the captive eyes, Lay on his back and stared at the flies on the wall And tried to remember, through an indifferent mist, A green place lost in the woods and a herd of black swine. They came and went and the mist moved round them again. The mist was not death. He was used to death by now, But the mist still puzzled him, sometimes. It was curious⁠—being so weak and yet, used to death. When you were strong, you thought of death as a strong Rider on a black horse, perhaps, or at least As some strong creature, dreadful because so strong. But when you were weak and lived in a place like this, Things changed. There was nothing strong about death any more, He was only the gnawed rat-bone on the dirty floor, That you stumbled across and hardly bothered to curse. That was all. The two Michigan men had died last night. The Ohio brothers were going to die this week, You got pretty soon so you knew when people would die, It passed the time as well as carving bone-rings Playing checkers with straws or learning Italian nouns