Voltairine de Cleyre was an American Anarchist and Feminist who lived in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. If anything, she was more of an individualist, a libertarian, than an anarcho-syndicalist. However, her interests and output were too varied for her to to be categorised and contained.
Here is one of her poems;
Ut Sementum Feceris, Ita Metes
(To the Czar, on a woman, a political prisoner, being flogged to death in Siberia)
How many drops must gather to the skies
Before the cloud burst comes, we may not know;
How hot the fires in under hells must glow
Ere the volcano's scalding lavas rise,
Can none say; but all wot the hour is sure!
Who dreams of vengeance has but to endure!
He may not say how many blows must fall,
How many lives be broken on the wheel,
How many martyrs fix the blood-red seal;
But certain is the harvest time of Hate!
And when the weak moans, by an indignant world
Re-echoed, to a throne are backward hurled,
Who listens, hears the mutterings of Fate!
No comments:
Post a Comment