December 28, 2005

Noretorp-Noretsyh - Kenneth Rexroth

Rainy, smoky Fall, clouds tower
In the brilliant Pacific sky.

In Golden Gate Park, the peacocks

Scream, wandering through falling leaves.

In clotting nights in smoking dark,

The Kronstadt sailors are marching

Through the streets of Budapest. The stones

Of the barricades rise up and shiver

Into form. They take the shapes

Of the peasant armies of Makhno.

The streets are lit with torches.

The gasoline drenched bodies

Of the Solovetsky anarchists

Burn at every street corner.

Kropotkin’s starved corpse is borne

In state past the offices

Of the cowering bureaucrats.

In all the Politisolators

Of Siberia the partisan dead are enlisting.

Berneri, Andreas Nin,

Are coming from Spain with a legion.

Carlo Tresca is crossing

The Atlantic with the Berkman Brigade.

Bukharin has joined the Emergency

Economic Council. Twenty million

Dead Ukrainian peasants are sending wheat.

Julia Poyntz is organizing American nurses.

Gorky has written a manifesto

“To the Intellectuals of the World!”

Mayakofsky and Essenin

Have collaborated on an ode,

“Let
Them Commit Suicide.”
In the Hungarian night

All the dead are speaking with one voice,

As we bicycle through the green

And sunspotted California

November. I can hear that voice

Clearer than the cry of the peacocks,

In the falling afternoon.

Like painted wings, the color

Of all the leaves of Autumn,

The circular tie-dyed skirt

I made for you flares out in the wind,

Over your incomparable thighs.

Oh splendid butterfly of my imagination,

Flying into reality more real

Than all imagination, the evil

Of the world covets your living flesh.

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