Merton’s poem was really an anti-poem, spoken by the commandant of a Nazi death camp. It was titled: “Chant to Be Used in Processions around a Site with Furnaces.” Merton’s “Chant” proceeded matter-of-factly through the speaker’s daily routine of genocide to these concluding lines: “Do not think yourself better because you burn up friends and enemies with long-range missiles without ever seeing what you have done.”[1]
