"fusillades" poems
1
A great year and place;
A harsh, discordant, natal scream out-sounding, to touch the mother’s heart
closer than any yet.
I walk’d the shores of my Eastern Sea,
Heard over the waves the little voice,
Saw the divine infant, where she woke, mournfully wailing, amid the roar
of cannon, curses, shouts, crash of falling buildings;
Was not so sick from the blood in the gutters running—nor from
the single corpses, nor those in heaps, nor those borne away in the
tumbrils;
Was not so desperate at the battues of death—was not so shock’d
at the repeated fusillades of the guns.
2
Pale, silent, stern, what could I say to that long-accrued retribution?
Could I wish humanity different?
Could I wish the people made of wood and stone?
Or that there be no justice in destiny or time?
3
O Liberty! O mate for me!
Here too the blaze, the grape-shot and the axe, in reserve, to fetch them out
in case of need;
Here too, though long represt, can never be destroy’d;
Here too could rise at last, murdering and extatic;
Here too demanding full arrears of vengeance.
4
Hence I sign this salute over the sea,
And I do not deny that terrible red birth and baptism,
But remember the little voice that I heard wailing—and wait with perfect trust,
no matter how long;
And from to-day, sad and cogent, I maintain the bequeath’d cause, as for all lands,
And I send these words to Paris with my love,
And I guess some chansonniers there will understand them,
For I guess there is latent music yet in France—floods of it;
O I hear already the bustle of instruments—they will soon be drowning
all that would interrupt them;
O I think the east wind brings a triumphal and free march,
It reaches hither—it swells me to joyful madness,
I will run transpose it in words, to justify it,
I will yet sing a song for you, MA FEMME.
2.2k
When I die,
bury me under a tree,
large and spreading,
so that I may give again to life
and be a home for breezes
and whatever birds
may please to make their home there.
Then climb the battlements
of my old and crumbling castle
in the air
and appreciate the spectacle
of a speck against infinity.
Go to my oak desk
and burn all love letters,
pure and singing though they are.
Let others learn love for themselves,
as I did. It is best.
Then celebrate, inebriate.
Divide up my possessions
and sell a few to buy fireworks that burn
brilliantly and fast.
Raid my cellar, eat, drink, make merry and enjoy,
for tomorrow is unknown.
And when the revelers stagger home,
remember only that I loved incandescently and enjoyed.
Yes, there were futile crusades, furious fusillades and
wild charges against the windmills,
but I did love. Yes, desperately.
That's all.
So goodbye, my friends. Don't grieve.
Please believe that
the gift of love and
this scatter of words
is all I want to leave behind.
See - they flutter from that great tree
that stands against the blustering sky
out there, beyond the mist,
along the pathway to
forever.
Oct 30, 2012
Oct 30, 2012 at 7:24 AM UTC
I am not Paris,
I am humanity
begging to be restored.
I am not Paris,
the terrorist,
the mockery.
I am the part of it
that asks why.
I am not the destroyer
the killer, the monster with a gun.
I am the disappointed , the little voice of conscience,
That tells you to look in all corners of the world
and breathe reality.
Because if you too
weep
You are not Paris,
You are the many,
The past, the present, the future
That beg for humanity to be restored.
Nov 14, 2015
Nov 14, 2015 at 8:58 AM UTC
☭ ♡ ☭ ♡ ☭
You posed yourselves (in radical English)
with fellow-travelers on the barricades.
recalling bygone barrio fusillades
though you speak only red diaper Spanish…
Beholding the party cooperative
where ****** tourists are shown Cuban truth,
you cherished the lies of your leftist youth,
half-informed, predictably progressive.
Stuffed full of radicalized rice and beans,
flatulent, dreaming of ignoble Che
you charmed the sultry proletarian queens.
In your new Guayabera, bonafide,
you hailed the revolutionary day;
pale thorn in the suffering People’s side…
Apr 4, 2017
Apr 4, 2017 at 7:20 AM UTC