The Feast of Vultures
~Voltaireine de Cleyre~
Behold, behold,
How a man is grown!
A cry hurled high 'gainst a scaffold's joist!
The Voice o Defiance - the loud, wild
Voice!
Whirled
Through the world,
A smoke-wreath curled
(Breath 'round hot kisses) around a fire!
See! the ground hisses
With red-streaming blood-clots of
long-frozen ire,
Waked by the flyin
Wild voice as it passes;
Groaning and crying,
The surge of the masses
Rolls and flashes
With thunderous roar -
Seams and lashes
The livid shore -
Seams and lashes and crunches and beats,
And drags a ragged wail to its
howling retreats!
Swift, swift, swift,
'Thwart the boold-rain's fall,
Through the fire-shot rigt
Of the broken wall,
The prophet-crying
The storm-song sighing,
Flies - and grom under Night's lifted pall,
Swarming, menace ten million darts,
Uplifting fragments of human shards!
Ah, white teeth chatter,
And dumb jaws fall,
While winged fires scatter
Till gloom gulfs all
Save the boom of the cannon that
storm the forts
That the people bombard with their
comrades'
hearts;
"Vengeance! Vengeance!" the voices
scream,
And the vulture pinions whirl and
stream!
"Knife for knife, as ye long have dealt;
The edge ye whetted for us to be felt,
Ye chopper o necks, on your own, on
your own!
Bare it, Coward! On, Prophet, on!"
Behold how high
Rolls a prison cry!
(As the three anarchist martyrs, August Vailant, Emile Henry and Sante Geronimo Caserio [European exemplars of "propoganda of the deed"] were led to their several executions, a voice from the prison cried loudly, "vive l'anarchie!" Through watch and ward the cry escaped, and no man owned the voice, but the cry is still resounding through the world.)
