This is the title poem of that section, "Prisoners."
"Though the road turn at last to death's ordinary door,
and we knock there, ready to enter
and it opens easily for us.
Yet, all the long journey we shall
have gone in chains, fed on knowledge-apples
acrid and riddled with grubs.
We taste other food that life, like a charitable farm girl,
holds out to us as we pass.
But our mouths are puckered, a taint of ash on the tongue.
It's not joy that we've lost.
Wildfire, it flares in dark or shine as it will.
What's gone is common happiness, plain bread
we could eat with the old apple of knowledge.
That old one, it griped us sometimes,
but it was firm, tart, sometimes delectable.
The ashen apple of these days grew from poisoned soil.
We are prisoners and must eat our ration.
All the long road in chains, even if, after all,
we come to death's ordinary door,
with time smiling its ordinary, long ago smile."
[APPLAUSE]