Classic Poem

I have come into the desert, to the breast of the Desolate One,
Who scorns soft robes, mantles and embroideries,
And, proud of the Sun's caresses, rejoices in her nakedness.
From a stark, rock-mountain, once bubbling lava
Out of Earth's agonies — the fierce and fiery entrails,
I look across the level sagebrush to pale and purple peaks;
Creation-thrusts, defiantly aspiring to the ether beyond us;
Pyramids of silence; watchful against the sky;
Guarding the Future.
Below are many carpets, ripe fields of barley,
Green squares of alfalfa; topaz and emerald,
Set in the yellow sand by shinning ditches,
As a jeweler, proud of his craft, embeds in soft wrought gold
Tablets of emerald for the golden throat
Of an Assyrian Princess.
How lovingly the Mother watches over her children;
Blessing their laughter-borne labor in the poppied fields of Peace.
Peace — a young goddess — tall and strong and very fecund,
Pregnant with abundance. Great is her wonder
And great the marvel of her footsteps;
From which springs the victory of trees
That spread their tents as a conqueror who after the battle,
Lies down by the river, soothed by the song of birds.
Her footprints are as gardens which
Invite the humming birds and the ceaseless bees;
Mignonette and marigold, stock and thyme and rosemary,
Pinks, parsley, pansies; wall-flower and violets.
Her hair smells of heliotrope; her breasts are golden quinces;
And between her hands are heavy harvests.
Soothed by her crooning as in hot desert noons
Rock-doves soothe with their mourning from cliffniches,
The nations, after the hopeful planting of the day,
Lie down to sweet repose, drinking from life-renewing flagons.
But where the moon weeps into the moaning sea
And stars drop tears into the quiet pools,
Where Silence sits, with covered head,
I see another planting.
Twenty million young men was the planting,
And the harvest is hate.
Twenty million young bodies, that were
Caressed by the hands of mothers,
Pledges of Love unto Love; gone down to the cold
Insensate fingers which unwrap the fine, mysterious web
And lay away the threads for other uses.
Twenty million young men was the planting;
A market garden — planted by hucksters for their greed,
By greedy hucksters for their profit.
Who will open the eyes of the young men that go about
The street, rejoicing in life; glad of the songs of the singers?
For the eyes of these who are gone will never again be opened;
Neither to Spring and the recurrent pageant,
Nor to Autumn, bearing heavy boughs to the feast;
Nor to any beauty of the canopied cradle which whirls
Us about in the sky between the golden watch tower
And the star-pebbled strand.
Nor ever again unto Love.
They are done with love — they are done with living,
And with giving — they are done with the mystery.
Sugar beets may come from their hearts; weeds from their lips;
As lilies from manure — but never any resurrection
Into the lovely planetary garden, to meet the ones they loved.
The desert is full of many mirages.
I see young men walking the streets
Of cities — lying down by the pouring sea
And the hurrying rivers. In city and in country,
Going about their love-making; tasting sweet fruit;
Telling to moon and stars how sweet is the taste.
But the guilty moon will not warn them, the mountains are silent
And the sardonic stars mock with laughter.
I see the hucksters, filling their bags with falsities;
Words that once were noble, when the cause was noble.
(No words ennoble a cause but the cause, the words.)
The hucksters fill their bags with lies that sting to hate.
As a farmer's wife, with strident cries, scatters corn,
Calling her foolish chickens to select the ones to kill,
The hucksters scatter lies and words,
" Country " — Whose country? — " Honor " — Whose honor? — " Fame " — " Glory " — " Patriotism. "
And for what? For whom?
The cockerels, necks outstretched, fast striding legs
And furious flapping wings, hasten to pick up corn.
Death, indifferent, whets his scythe and waits.
In slaughter yards where sheep are gathered from
The sunflower hills and willow springs of far Nevada,
A wether, wearing his master's collar and
His master's bell, leads the dumb flock,
Still hearing bells on sunflower hills, into
The death-chute — but at the top he quickly steps
Aside and every wooly throat meets, swift, the knife.
When kings wore crowns, helmets and coats of mail,
Magnificent their raging where most danger was,
The cause was theirs — the gain was theirs.
Our kings bell " Leaders, " collar colleges, and put
A knife and purse into the hand of Christ.
O Thought, attribute of gods, last gift from Time,
When will you take the ring from our
Nose, the tom-tom and the war club
From our fist? When Intellect stands sentinel
Upon our deeds, how beautiful a world.
But now a demon rains down ashes on the people
And pours hot lava on their fruitful fields.
A something no man ever saw: a feudal monster.
First by kings begot and still begetting kings.
The State. Has any heard from Government
A sob for young men slain? or who has seen
A tear upon its cheek for starving babes
Or murdered miners? Does Government consider how
Most precious to each one is his own life?
Sculpture of Eternity on living clay;
A too brief sally from oblivion to oblivion,
A very precious thing.
Government does not think this.
Who does think this?
Perhaps a woman, bent at dawn above a cradle;
Perhaps a man, at midnight, bowed above a crucible.
Government — a vain chimera with a thousand arms,
Which none has seen, yet strong to snatch
Young men into the grave,
And hasten childhood to the garbage mound beyond the city.
A thousand unseen hands that stop the mouth
And bind as bondsmen, builders of the temple.
A thousand heads unseen and every head
A maw that swallows down fertility,
So that the fields travail in vain, the toilers sweat
Without a hope, mothers shriek in the birth-pang,
Cursing their hour and fathers mutter murder.
A thousand feet which tread the people as
The treaders in the wine vat tread the grapes,
But the wine these tread is blood;
The blood of men;
The blood of women;
The blood of children; —
A thousand feet unseen which lift and fall
With dull, mechanic rhythm of the quartz-mill stamps;
Crushing — crushing — crushing
Quartz for gold. But the rock these crush
Is the living souls of men.
The great spaces of the desert were seas which poured
Their tides into the sapphire cup, that ghosts
Might have a home — and the cliffs are full of voices.
I saw thick as bees at the door of the hive,
Swag-bellied men, strong and powerful,
And priests, fat with the roast meats of sacrifice
And unctious with oil, carving the cliff into
An idol. Its mouth was the gate of hell
The womb of hell, its belly — a monster.
" Go, " said the swag-bellied Lords to the priests,
" Get into the guts of the idol and shout
" Through its mouth; " This is the State, your god." "
When the people heard, they fell on their faces
And knocked their foreheads upon the ground
Saying — " It is the voice of God.
" It is the voice of God. "
" Proclaim, " said the Lords to the priests,
" A war, that we may exploit the earth
" And its inhabitants. Call it a holy war —
" A war to end all war forever. "
When this was done the people again lay on their bellies
And beat the ground with their foreheads, saying,
" It is the voice of God. It is the voice of God. "
The priests received their wages — vessels of gold
Vessels of silver, filled with oil.
At the feet of the idol was a stone.
The tallest man could lie outstretched upon it,
And shaped upon it was a low convexity.
The stone of sacrifice — the idol's altar.
Polished and black it was, black with the blood
Of twenty million sons of mothers, carefully selected,
Instead of rams or goats for sacrifice.
Suddenly drums rolled, and tom-toms thumped.
Horns blared and trumpets snarled; and came
A priest procession led by the High Priest.
Beside him a proud youth, naked and crowned with bay,
And about him wrapped a striped flag — striped red with blood,
The blood of rebels and of traitors.
When they reached the altar stone, the youth
Handed the flag to the priest and proudly lay
Upon the altar.
Carefully the priest adjusted the gleaming back
To the boss shaped on the stone — to throw the breast,
The proud young breast, to meet the sacrificial knife.
Louder the trumpets snarled and tom-toms thumped
To drown the dying groan and women's sobs.
The priest held high the shining knife, bright as
The lidless eyes of a snake, and split Love's altar.
Skilfully he trust his cruel arm into
Life's temple and held before the yelling crowd
The pulsing heart. The mad mob raged as foams
A savage sea against a rocky shore.
And the people danced about the altar of their god.
A woman pushed a youth of flowerlike loveliness
Toward the priest, screaming " Take this — my son —
" My only son — for such a holy cause. "
The youth was forced down on the altar. He
Was white as a windflower in the shadow of tall pines.
The priest bent back the lovely head over the boss
So that the neck-veins were as violet tracings on
A lily-cup; opened them and the bright
Blood trickled to a chiseled trough,
And madmen fought to dip their fingers in the stream.
" Take this star of gold, " the high priest to the mother said,
" You are a patriot. " She stared at the white thing on
The altar and went her way, hugging the star
Close to the breast where once had lain the lovely head.