Classic Poem

The black demon is riding.
Furiously he rides on the fore-front of the tempest
Which licks up the blossomry of the World
And blows it away as dust.
The wings of his coursers
Overwhelm the zenith and
The whistle of their pinions
Is the screaming of eagles.
Their manes toss out lightnings;
Flames shoot from their nostrils.
And their hoofs strike out a great stench.
They paw the air for hunger
And neigh terribly for drink.
Their hunger is for the flesh of young men.
The river they drink is blood.

I have seen War.
I have heard it.
I have smelled it.
Even now I am waked from dreams
By the stink of bodies
Three days dead under the sun.
The life in the black mouths was maggots,
And flies crawled over the eyeballs,
Buzzing up angrily as we threw
Manhood as garbage into the pit of putrefaction.
Weeds will grow upon the lips of lovers
And grass will flourish out of the hearts of fathers,
But the father and the lover will return no more.
Nature will make excellent manure
Of the promise for the future.
Musicians, artists, artisans, artificers,
Mechanics, merry-makers, discoverers;
Poets, makers of soul.
I have hugged the grinning skeleton to my bosom
And called him Honor, but his breath
Was the breath of the charnel-house.
I have, in my folly, endured
Burning summer and biting winter;
Thrist, hunger, fever; marching like marionettes
So that we lay down in the mud
And puked from exhaustion.
Incessant rain, Earth become diluvian;
Men, mud-daubed, lizards, without sense or soul
Seeking their own destruction at a Master's bidding,
Body and soul wallowing in primeval slime
At the bidding of Masters who sat at a table
And pulled the strings of their marionettes.
Was this for a great thing?
No it was for greed, and rivalry of power.
I have heard the screams of innocent, dumb horses,
Disemboweld;
And have stopped my ears
Against the cries of men,
Begging, for the pity of Christ, that they be shot.
Emperors, presidents, politicians, spinners of diplomacy,
Have you ever heard the ravings of those
Who, through torture, begged that their agony be ended?
The agony which you had made?
In death and agony they reached to clearer vision
And died cursing " God, " " Country, " " Patriotism. "
What is patriotism?
Christians who befoul the Holy Sepulchre,
I ask you is it to love your brothers as yourselves?
Or is it a race for greed over the bodies of other Christians?
Politicians and mountebank ministers
Give the answer.
The peoples set up no boundaries against each other.
They harvest from adjoining fields,
And call to each other from neighbor-vineyards
Where doves coo among the vines
And cock-quails crow to golden morning.
They sing the old-time songs of good comrades,
Marrying and intermarrying.
They have neither greed nor enmity.

Suddenly, as a dry prairie fired by lightning,
A conflagration roars to the horizon,
Hate falls upon the peoples.
They run about killing each other,
Not knowing why.
Whose are the fingers slipped through
The collars of the dogs of war,
Ready to release them?
Do the peasants who plow the kindly fields
Declare war against each other,
Or laborers, after their toil,
Sit in cottages, planning battle?
Do miners hasten from the dark
Communion of the ages
To slaughter their brothers?
Or the Titans of the forges
Plot murder against their fellows?
Who is it orders this hate;
This carefully arranged murder?
Whose is the quarrel?
Whose the profit?
Answer — whose the profit?
The greed for gain makes all war.
The poor, sodden herd slavishly keeps step
To the time set by their Rulers,
And crowd up the slaughter-chute
To the butcher's knife.
Fooled by the lies of the Masters,
They enter the dark cave, where is
Neither baby-fingers, nor lovers' cheeks;
Neither sun, nor moon, nor the ripple of waters;
Neither seeing, nor hearing;
Nor thought, nor laughter any more.

The strange and curious bees
Are free, winged things.
None can fence their pasture against them.
They are forward to die against another's attack
Upon the hive they have stored.
But what share have the toilers
In the honeycomb they build?
What ownership have soldiers in the earth
Which is wet with their blood.
And which they wet with the blood of others?
For what do the people throw away life,
That mysterious commodity quarried from time?
The lives of the people are but a little thing
To the Masters; not so much as the life
Of herds and flocks bred for slaughter.
But they are of inestimable worth to the owners.
Perhaps they are star-dust; or perhaps
Out of such, star-dust may be made.

O young men, with dawn behind your eyes
And the future held as a puzzling toy
Between your strong, young hands,
Why do you crowd to the sacrifice?

Why do you kiss, so negligently, goodby
To weeping mothers, wives, sweethearts, babes,
A strange seeming in your eyes;
Do you hear the scream of the harpies,
Who fly, smoky-plumed, before the battle?

Awake, young men! Awake!
Be not besotted by the mad shrieks of the war-makers.
Awake from your sacrificial drunkenness.
Go down to the eternal river and wash clear your eyes.
You bow in blind idolatry to sacred falsities,
Antique garments stuffed and set upon a pole.
Loyalty, Obedience, Patriotism.
Obedience to what? Loyalty to what? Patriotism for what?
She whom you follow is a bedizened whore
Sent into the streets by the Masters to betray you.
But Freedom lies with toads in a dark dungeon.
When will you set her free?
You are idolators to a flag of freedom which has become
A flag of oppression waving above the jails of the Masters,
Where those are crushed who speak against them.

Make a proclamation through trumpets:
" Freedom is our true redeemer.
" She refuses idolatry,
" To men, or to flags;
" Or words, or songs.
" Her mouth shall not be bandaged by Law
" Nor her brow broken by the fist of Authority.
" " Order" is a wall built around " privilege" for protection.
" " Order" is the husk of the Past — Resistance is the seed of the Future.
" Christ denied the Law and despised the lawful Order of his time.
" Always " Order" crucifies the saviors of mankind.
" But Freedom is the mother of an order which
Has the rhythm of ocean;
" The free breathing of a willing people,
" Unchecked and uncontrolled along the ways of peace.
" The one who walks beside her
" Is Rebellion, Mother of the Beautiful One;
" And she who walks on the other hand is Justice,
" Daughter of Freedom. "
" Will the Masters shout and applaud and willingly acquiesce
" When these Three strip them of their stolen robes
" And part them among the naked?
" Will they be glad when these divide
" Their unearned abundance among those they have robbed?
" Will they who have swept flowers
" From before the feet of children,
" Snatch up trumpets and join in an exultant
" Psalm when these Three shall spread flowers for the
" Feet of the little ones? "

Young men who are about to die,
Stay a moment and take my hand,
Who am also about to die.
You have been carefully winnowed and selected
For the banqueting of a Hooded Skeleton.
Tell me by whom selected? — and for what?
Not you alone die, but the children
Who through you should enter Life.
Fathers of these expectant generations,
Tell me, for what are you selected
And by whom?
Victims stretched upon hospital cots,
You who see not the faces bending above you,
Nor shall ever see the eyes of the beloved,
Nor the face of your child.
You between whom and the world
Doors have been shut,
Who never will hear the April bird-song,
Or squirrels throwing nuts into October leaves,
Or sudden crack of a dry branch
Startling the woody silences;
You who, crumpled and twisted,
Shall be frightful to children;
You who never again shall spurn
With light, keen feet the rugged mountain-top,
The level shore,
Tell me, for what? — For what?
Shall I applaud you?
Shall I applaud gladiators
Who stain the sands with each other's blood
In a game of the Masters?

Is not Death busy enough?
None escapes his shaft.
His muffled feet creep relentlessly to all.
Why should we heap him with an unripe load?
Take War by the throat, young soldier,
And wring from his blood-frothed lips
The answer, — why? — why should we die?
Why should we die and not those who have made War?
Young men,
And even more than young men,
Young women,
Guardians of the Future,
Is one man who toils for the Masters so much better
Or so much worse than another,
So much richer or poorer,
That he must kill his brother?
Is it just to inscrutable Nature
Who with mysterious care has brought you
Down the Path Infinite
That you should kill your brother or be killed by him?
Tell me distinctly for what is the sacrifice?
I demand that you refuse to be satisfied,
That you unravel the old shoutings,
That you peer to the very bottom.
Draw in your breath delightedly,
And confidently insist:
" My life is my Own.
" A gift from the Ages,
" And to me precious
" Beyond estimation.
" I will deny Presidents, Kings, Congresses.
" I will defy authority.
" I will question all things.
" I will obstinately be informed
" Whence comes the battle?
" Whose is the combat?
" Why should I be pushed forward? "
Alas, pitiful young men, you are without intelligence
And you die.
Young men,
And even more than young men,
Young women,
I charge you that in that large solitude
Where the soul meditates undisturbed,
And in the great crowds where souls jostle together,
Examine all things and refuse to be answered
Till you are answered of your own souls.
Come with me — apart — alone — solitary,
As if we trod the darkness of Cosmic Space
Beyond the stars, where we cannot see each other,
Soul to soul, naked,
Tell me for what do you give your lovers unto Death?
Alas, pitiful young women, your lovers must die
Because you have no minds. Mind is salvation.

I climbed to the top of the world
Where the immutable rocks lay scattered.
The distorted pines mutely exhibited to me
Their struggle,
And Earth showed me her ancient scars.
There I put my question.
Not to the Rulers of the World
But to the Weavers of Destiny,
Immeasurable Space and Inevitable Time.
Why must the young men die?
I, too, would be satisfied
Why the young men must die before their time
And for what the maidens,
Treasure caskets of the Infinite,
Must be robbed of the treasure,
Hoarded by the Miser Years.
Mystery, — inscrutable.
Wonderful beyond wonder.
The answer came in a thousand little whispers:
" The generations are without mind. Mind is salvation. "
Below me mists curled like dragons.
The world stretched a limitless desert,
Grey and barren.
Across it passed hosts and infinite hosts lost in the dust,
Emerging again, tangled and glittering:
Charlemagne and Caesar, Alexander and Napoleon;
The armored elephants of Hannibal
Trampling the wounded,
And from the plains of the Dead drifted ghost-words —
" Conquest " — " Glory. "
I heard the weeping of ghosts.
And the laughter of devils.
The people are mindless.
The whole earth was walled about by a wall
Reaching to the sky
And on it, in robes of gold, on golden thrones,
Sat iron-browed men, hawk-visaged men,
Hog-snouted men.
Obedient to them, an iron hand on a great derrick
Reached the compass of the wall,
And snatched the morning-faced youths.
A trumpeter called aloud:
" Young men of the Morning, without mind, without courage,
" You have lived for us, you must die for us. "
If any rebelled, the iron-hand strangled him.
One who lay strangled was a stranger.
On his cap was " Liberty. "
And the mindless crowd kicked his body
Shouting " Hate — War — Patriotism. "
Armies crawled over the land
As locusts over a green field,
Leaving it bare.
Oppressed serfs swarmed to the defense
Of their oppressors,
Tearing each others' throats.
Through the mist,
I saw mothers kissing their sons
In a strange silence,
Remembering the hour they bore them.
They laid upon a foul altar
The precious fruit of their agony.
The woman took up the hoe
Where the man had dropped it
And wielded the axe the man had laid down.
The old women gathered in groups,
Garrulously sad, talking low,
Knitting and weaving for those already dead.
And the maidens with white faces
And lips salt with tears,
Led Love to an iron crucifix.
No one had any mind.
No one had any courage.

I saw the Devil at his play-ground,
Leading his legions who hopped gleefully about
Shrieking with laughter.
They faced two together who blindly
Murdered each other.
And the Masters of each applauded.
They fiddled agony on the exquisite nerves
And smashed the silver-threaded spine,
They made a chorus of the screams of torture
And sang it to the diapason
Of the furious shells: doves of the Masters.
The breath of the dying spread as a blue mist over the land.

The Devil and his imps were whimsical.
They tore off legs and arms,
Seizing a nose, an eye, a mouth; holding them up
To the Masters for their safe applause.
A head here, half a head there; a jaw,
Leaving the tongue to dangle foolishly,
The crazy eyes trying to speak.
They broke the windows
Which look out upon the universe.
They annihilated fatherhood.
They were obscene.
A wretch trying to crawl away
From his blind agony
Was tethered with his own bowels.
And the imps — servants of the Masters
Shouted at his comical antics.

The Devil amused himself in his toyshop
Whittling cripples, monstrosities,
Misshapen burlesques.
Grotesques for his laughter.
The carpenters of flesh, splashed with blood,
Carved feverishly the flesh which is cheaper than veal.
Yet its price was the travail of the mothers.
Even the grass shrank from the screams of torment.
Yet the war-makers sat down to dinner comfortably,
Though the wine they drank was the color of blood.
The Devil sang a ribald song,
And beckoned to the reapers to harvest their crop.
In the carrion trenches the dead
Hugged each other as brothers.

" How comic are the attitudes of the dead
" On the field of battle — toys of the warmakers.
" Absurd gestures and ridiculous contortions,
" A head under an arm and arms and legs stuck up curiously.
" Pantaloons and jesters making satiric pantomime;
" The dead laughing at their own folly. "

An idiot wandered over the battlefield
Muttering, " I was too good for this. They saved me. "
And he kicked the moon-pale face of an obedient patriot, saying,
" Wake up. The Masters call you.
" Do you not hear? The Masters call you.
" What! Will you not wake up
" Even when the Masters want you?
" You were ready enough to go to sleep for them
" But you will not wake for them.
" No — you will not wake for them.
" Oho! you cunning rascal, I know:
" You refuse to be put to work again.
" You are comfortable.
" At last you cheat the Masters.
" You insist upon rest. "
He took the noble head of a poet
Between his hands and shook it,
Laughing and screaming till the buzzards
Flew away from their orgy,
And sat on filthy perches jealously watching
The fodder thrown to them by the Masters.

The Devil held high festival
For the triumph of Man's Intellect.
Gas bombs which blot out cities, Man's creation,
The titan shells which from afar rend the earth
And from their fiery volcanoes
Scatter the bloody gobbets of what were men,
Wasted fragments of Nature's delicately spun,
Curiously balanced mysteries,
Each with his own destiny; none duplicates,
Nor, ever to be duplicated.
The soul of Man shattered contemptuously
By the greedy brute in Man;
Man's contemplative godhood smeared
With his own filth.

Is there an animal more stupid than man?
The creative god within him used for his annihilation.
The ants are never so, nor the bits of pulp
Which build strong walls against the waves
Of Ocean; so atolls arise covered with palms,
Offering quiet harbors to the ships.

The Devil twisted his tail into a prayerbook
And hung about him a shroud for a surplice.
He intoned with upturned eyes:
" Jesus who was crucified for Man's salvation,
" Spin the hot bullets to be cooled in human flesh.
" Guided the monster shells which scream in ecstasy
" That their waiting is ended and they are released
" For their feeding.
" Savior of mankind, give each of these Christians
" The greater strength to make the most orphans.
" To hate their brothers.
" To murder men.
" To rape women.
" To starve children.
" Thine be the glory, Christ Jesus,
" Amen, Amen. "
The Devil hugged his tail to his bosom
And shouted with laughter, saying:
" O ye Christians — Disciples of Christ. "
There were two — enemies.
Did not the Masters say so?
Their blood which had run together
Was of one redness and
Mingled beyond distinction.
Their hands reached toward each other,
Almost touching.
There were other two;
A boy — his white face, beautiful as a girl's,
And on his forehead, caressing
The long black hair as might his mother,
Lay the hand of his enemy.
The Masters said so.
For the boy, a mother waits.
For the other, a woman, crooning,
His baby at her breast,
" Hush-a-bye baby, daddy will come
" When the war's over daddy will come. "

The air is sick with the salt, sweet
Smell of blood; heavy with the sighs of widows.
Across a torn and darkened plain that once
Was a beautiful world, the Devil leads
His obscene Brood — a monster which has littered.
Thick as ants they cripple after him,
Hobbling like broken grasshoppers,
Writhing like wounded snakes.
Behind them is the silence of Desolation.

I stood upon the top of the world
And Earth exhibited the scars of her battle.
White-footed Day sped past me
And shook his defiant lances against the gloom.
From a poplar, utterly mangled by shells,
A thrush whistled a tune.
And busy sparrows nested in a skull
Which lay in a furrow plowed by a shell.
A little brook washed itself clean of blood
And ceased not from its song.
A chimney marked a ruined home.
Nature passed by, serene, careless, indifferent,
Unchanging, triumphant;
As it was from the beginning.
In the portico of her temple,
Ceaselessly weaving a web of beauty,
Evening drew her crimson veil about her ankles
And stepped down into the flowing purple.
Imperious Night waved a jeweled sceptre
And her torchbearers paced the eternal beat.
The Battle snored fitfully, an ogre surfeited.
As soul-parting Dawn crept from the pale east
The moans of the wounded grew rhythmically weaker.
The dying had time to die.
War's lullaby was ended.