13

The crying of red flowers

is to come in the sky.

Farther yet the revolving blossoms

of the bombing squadrons.

Spain shall spread.

China shall not be alone.

Neither Addis Ababa nor liberty

is a final and willing corpse.

Too many corpses refused to be

final and willing corpses.

They talk now in their last sleep:

and they are heard:

these losers are heard.

The earth may yet seem covered with losers.

Nevertheless before the last platoon of losers is shot,

Before the last corpse gets a storm-trooper kick in the face

There will be fresh foreshadowings on the air.

For the winners never win in this game

and keep their winnings: it is so written.

Corpses can be flung in a hole:

shadows march on.

The losers so often come back

ghosting their conquerors.

There are not nails enough

to nail down victory.

No more can absolute conquest be kept without change

than you can take wool and weave garments for shadows.

Spain yes, China yes, Austria ja:

they are beginnings:

yet to come is the drama and its Act I,

Act II, Act III—and so on.

Their lost men took a hand so often

in items of sheer valor, no music nor flowers,

dying without witnesses nor loved ones at hand

nor enough fragments

to put in a basket for burial.

You young ones, you darlings of destiny,

before your eyes too

shall unfold the sheets of fire and the call:

popular fronts and governments

shall not perish from the earth:

is this the word? this from

that shovel of dust and valor in Spain—

even though a fraction of them had only a notion

to take a whirl at the wild game of war

and flirt with death for the fun of it?

The timing of their laughter

may be mentioned—

those who spat in the dust

saying, “What the hell? Who wants

to live forever anyhow?”

14

One may speak as no prophet at all,

as a traveler taking it slow

over a mug of java with ham on rye,

as a citizen troubled over storm warnings,

over black roses, heavy roses in the sky,

and heavy heavy heavy hangs over thy head.

They are changing the maps

of Europe, Asia, Africa,

they are changing the maps like always.

Be steady now and keep your shirt on.

Be cool as death if you can.

Try to figure it out for yourself.

The lilacs of April are good to look at.

So are the oaks of gold in the fall of the year

And the whirl of snow in the winter time

and the growing corn in summer.

They carry beautiful fables

for those having time to look and see.

And yet—what of it? who cares?

When young men are cut down like cornstalks

and cathedrals go down like oaks under lightning

and lilacs wither from the breath of gas—

what of it? who cares?

When shall men be hard and bitter,

open and public and incessant