You have turned deaf ears to others—
Me you shall hear.
Out of the mouths of turbines,
Out of the turgid throats of engines,
Over the whistling steam,
You shall hear me shrilly piping.
Your mills I shall enter like the wind,
And blow upon your hearts,
Kindling the slow fire.
They think they have tamed you, workers—
Beaten you to a tool
To scoop up hot honor
Till it be cool—
But out of the passion of the red frontiers
A great flower trembles and burns and glows
And each of its petals is a people.
Come forth, you workers—
Clinging to your stable
And your wisp of warm straw—
Let the fires grow cold,
Let the iron spill out of the troughs,
Let the iron run wild
Like a red bramble on the floors….
As our forefathers stood on the prairies
So let us stand in a ring,
Let us tear up their prisons like grass
And beat them to barricades—
Let us meet the fire of their guns
With a greater fire,
Till the birds shall fly to the mountains
For one safe bough.
TO ALEXANDER BERKMAN
Can you see me, Sasha?
I can see you….
A tentacle of the vast dawn is resting on your face
that floats as though detached
in a sultry and greenish vapor.
I cannot reach my hands to you…
would not if I could,
though I know how warmly yours would close about them.
Why?
I do not know…
I have a sense of shame.
Your eyes hurt me… mysterious openings in the gray stone of your face
through which your spirit streams out taut as a flag
bearing strange symbols to the new dawn.
If I stay… projected, trembling against these bars filtering emaciated light… will your eyes… that bore their lonely way through mine… stop as at a friendly gate… grow warm… and luminous? … but I cannot stay… for the smell… I know… how the days pass… The prison squats with granite haunches on the young spring, battened under with its twisting green… and you… socket for every bolt piercing like a driven nail. Eyes stare you through the bars… eyes blank as a graveled yard… and the silence shuffles heavy dice of feet in iron corridors… until the day… that has soiled herself in this black hole to caress the pale mask of your face… withdraws the last wizened ray to wash in the infinite her discolored hands. Can you hear me, Sasha, in your surrounded darkness?
EMMA GOLDMAN
How should they appraise you, who walk up close to you as to a mountain, each proclaiming his own eyeful against the other's eyeful.
Only time standing well off shall measure your circumference and height.