I am the people, the mob

I am the people—the mob—the crowd—the mass.

Do you know that all the great work of the world is done through me?

I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the world’s food and

     clothes.

I am the audience that witnesses history. The Napoleons come from me

     and the Lincolns. They die. And then I send forth more Napoleons

     and Lincolns.

I am the seed ground. I am a prairie that will stand for much plowing.

     Terrible storms pass over me. I forget. The best of me is sucked out

     and wasted. I forget. Everything but Death comes to me and makes

     me work and give up what I have. And I forget.

And Death Shall Have No Dominion

And death shall have no dominion.  

Dead men naked they shall be one

With the man in the wind and the west moon;

When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,  

They shall have stars at elbow and foot;  

Though they go mad they shall be sane,  

Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;  

Though lovers be lost love shall not;  

And death shall have no dominion.

Haymarket: May Day, 1939

August Spies: You may strangle this voice, but there will be a time when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today.

Albert Parsons: O men of America, let the voice of the people be heard!

Still bright, and searing ignorance and fear,

This stronger beacon that you tended burns

And on this day of each advancing year

The memory of that first May First

        returns.

Histrionics

--Albert Parsons

went to his death

singing Annie Laurie;

didn't another have

a rose in his coat--

or was it a pink--

dramatizing himself--

Reveille

Come forth, you workers!

Let the fires go cold

Let the iron spill out, out of the troughs

Let the iron run wild

Like a red bramble on the floors

Leave the mill and the foundry and the mine

And the shrapnel lying on the wharves

Leave the desk and the shuttle and the loom

Come,

With your ashen lives,

Your lives like dust in your hands.

Two Religions

When revolution is outlined on the horizon

the old cauldron of religions gets stirred up.

In normal times

religion meant going to Mass

paying tithes for God's house

baptizing children

and confessing sins to keep one's account in order.

When revolution is outlined on the horizon

churches remember the masses

and come down from the clouds and mysteries

and Sunday tranquility.

To Those Born Later

I

Truly, I live in dark times!

The guileless word is folly. A smooth forehead

Suggests insensitivity. The man who laughs

Has simply not yet had

The terrible news.

What kind of times are they, when

A talk about trees is almost a crime

Because it implies silence about so many horrors?

That man there calmly crossing the street

Is already perhaps beyond the reach of his friends

Who are in need?