Roller Skating Favors

You who live safe

in your warm houses,

You who find, returning in the evening,

Hot food and friendly faces

Consider if this is a man

who works in the mud

that knows no peace

fighting for half a loaf

who dies a yes or a no.

Consider if this is a woman

no hair and no name

no more strength to remember

eyes empty and her womb cold

like a frog in winter.

forget that this was:

Remember these words.

Engrave in your heart

When at home by

lying down, getting up.

Repeat them to your children.

O there undone Home

illness prevent you from

twist your face you were born.

The author, Primo Levi, was deported to Auschwitz who survived because he had been sent to a labor camp. With this work he wanted to "condemn" the men who were at home because they had not prevented the massacre of Jews. This poem consists
by: a block of four, two fives, a sestina, and finally a triplet.
The language is simple and understandable, simple style, clean and clear. There are
anaphora: you, that without, consider, meditate.
Each verse has a special meaning: the first refers to people who are not Jewish and were not extermination camps, the second refers to the Jewish men in the field and with a few verses Levi tells their suffering and their distress, the third is related to Jewish women who have lost their identity and even the ability to procreate, because of the cruelty of the Germans, the fourth is a statement about what had really happened and Finally the fifth stanza is like a curse for the children of non-Jews. "