Last Words

by Patrick Appel

Charles Simic reviews Robert Elder's Last Words Of The Executed:

"Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something," Mexicanrevolutionary Pancho Villa worried in his dying moments. It isuniversally believed that if you care to be remembered by posterity,you better have something memorable to say in your last moments onearth. "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country,"Nathan Hale, an American spy convicted of espionage by the British in1776 famously...