III

We are old.... 
Old as song.... 
We are dumb song. 
(Epics tingled
In our blood
When we haled Hypatia
Over the stones
In Alexandria.)

Could we loose
The wild rhythms clinched in us.... 
March in bands of troubadours.... 
We would be of gentle mood. 
When Christ healed us
Who were dumb—­
When he freed our shut-in song—­
We strewed green palms
At his pale feet... 
We sang hosannas
In Jerusalem. 
And all our fumbling voices blent
In a brief white harmony. 
(But a mightier song
Was in us pent
When we nailed Christ
To a four-armed tree.)

IV

We are young. 
When we rise up with singing roots,
(Warm rains washing
Gutters of Berlin
Where we stamped Rosa...  Luxemburg
On a night in spring.)
Rhythms skurry in our blood. 
Little nimble rats of song
In our feet run crazily
And all is dust... we trample... on.

Mad nights when we make ritual
(Feet running before the sleuth-light... 
And the smell of burnt flesh
By a flame-ringed hut
In Missouri,
Sweet as on Rome’s pyre....)
We make ropes do rigadoons
With copper feet that jig on air.... 
We are the Mob.... 
Old as song. 
Tyre knew us
And Israel.

REVEILLE

IN HARNESS

I

The foreman’s head
slowly circling... 
White rims
under yellow disks of eyes.... 
Gold hairs
starting out of a blond scowl... 
Hovering... disappearing... recurring...
the foreman’s head.

Droning of power-machines... droning of girl with adenoids...  Arms flapping with a fin-like motion under sun burning down through a sky-light like a glass lid.  Light skating on the rims of wheels... boring in gimlet points.  Needles flickering fierce white threads of light fine as a wasp’s sting.  Light in sweat-drops brighter than eyes and calico-pallid faces and bodies throwing off smells—­ and the air a bloated presence pressing on the walls and the silence a compressed scream.

Allons enfants de la patrie—­ Electric... piercing... shrill as a fife the voice of a little Russian breaks out of the shivered circle.  Another voice rises... another and another leaps like flame to flame.  And life—­surging, clamorous, swarming like a rabble
     crazily fluttering ragged petticoats—­
comes rushing back into torpid eyes like suddenly yielded gates.

The girl with adenoids rocks on her hams.  A torrent of song strains at her throat, gurgles, rushes, gouges her blocked pipes.  Her feet beat a wild tattoo—­ head flung back and pelvis lifting to the white body of the sun.  Mates now, these two—­ goddess and god....  Marchons!