Sonnet IV

Here lies a poor man they burnt at the stake.
This one, they had his neck stretched by a rope.
I heard that both men had defied the pope.
Perhaps they were upset by both men's take
On the ways and the means they put in play
Their plans for controlling our daily lives.
More rebel men will die on blades and knives
In the struggle for them to have their say.
Will writing down the crimes that they commit 
Provide us chance to diarise our loss? 
Each day will show the slow decay of rights
And sufferance will never benefit
From victims being mounted on a cross
And used to brighten up the winter nights.

John Hooper, English clergyman, Bishop of Gloucester, and Protestant martyr, was burnt at the stake today in 1555.

Alice Walker, American novelist, poet and activist, winner of the Pulitzer prize for fiction, was born today in 1944.