The Hanging of Saddam Hussein (revised)

They hung Saddam Hussein this week
for a few of the thousand evils he had done.
The newspaper here ran a headline
two inches high, as if we had won
and I imagine that there are many
who feel something has now been done,
that some wrong has been righted.

I saw a link to a video of his hanging
but decided instead to write these lines
because, though I know he was a bad man
I can't help feeling a connection of some kind
to that man with rope around his neck
at the will of masked men behind him in a line
so sure that revenge is somehow righteous.

Saddam is dead now and silent
Violence, it seems, begets only violence
and still more violence.