Chinese nightingale and other poems / Vachel Lindsay [electronic text]

THIRD SECTION

AMERICA AT WAR WITH GERMANY
BEGINNING APRIL, 1917

OUR MOTHER POCAHONTAS

(Note: — Pocahontas is buried at Gravesend, England.)

"Pocahontas' body, lovely as a poplar, sweet as a red haw in November or a pawpaw in May — did she wonder? does she remember — in the dust — in the cool tombs?"

CARL SANDBURG.

I

Powhatan was conqueror, Powhatan was emperor. He was akin to wolf and bee, Brother of the hickory tree. Son of the red lightning stroke And the lightning-shivered oak. His panther-grace bloomed in the maid Who laughed among the winds and played In excellence of savage pride, Wooing the forest, open-eyed, In the springtime, In Virginia, Our Mother, Pocahontas.

Her skin was rosy copper-red. And high she held her beauteous head. Her step was like a rustling leaf: Her heart a nest, untouched of grief. She dreamed of sons like Powhatan, And through her blood the lightning ran. Love-cries with the birds she sung, Birdlike In the grape-vine swung. The Forest, arching low and wide Gloried in its Indian bride. Rolfe, that dim adventurer Had not come a courtier. John Rolfe is not our ancestor. We rise from out the soul of her Held in native wonderland, While the sun's rays kissed her hand, In the springtime, In Virginia, Our Mother, Pocahontas.

II

She heard the forest talking, Across the sea came walking, And traced the paths of Daniel Boone,

Then westward chased the painted moon. She passed with wild young feet On to Kansas wheat, On to the miners' west, The echoing cañons' guest, Then the Pacific sand, Waking, Thrilling, The midnight land....

On Adams street and Jefferson — Flames coming up from the ground! On Jackson street and Washington — Flames coming up from the ground! And why, until the dawning sun Are flames coming up from the ground? Because, through drowsy Springfield sped This red-skin queen, with feathered head, With winds and stars, that pay her court And leaping beasts, that make her sport; Because, gray Europe's rags august She tramples in the dust; Because we are her fields of corn; Because our fires are all reborn From her bosom's deathless embers,

Flaming As she remembers The springtime And Virginia, Our Mother, Pocahontas.

III

We here renounce our Saxon blood. Tomorrow's hopes, an April flood Come roaring in. The newest race Is born of her resilient grace. We here renounce our Teuton pride: Our Norse and Slavic boasts have died: Italian dreams are swept away, And Celtic feuds are lost today....

She sings of lilacs, maples, wheat, Her own soil sings beneath her feet, Of springtime And Virginia, Our Mother, Pocahontas.

CONCERNING EMPERORS

I. GOD SEND THE REGICIDE

Would that the lying rulers of the world Were brought to block for tyrannies abhorred. Would that the sword of Cromwell and the Lord, The sword of Joshua and Gideon, Hewed hip and thigh the hosts of Midian. God send that ironside ere tomorrow's sun; Let Gabriel and Michael with him ride. God send the Regicide.

II. A COLLOQUIAL REPLY: TO ANY NEWSBOY

If you lay for Iago at the stage door with a brick You have missed the moral of the play. He will have a midnight supper with Othello and his wife. They will chirp together and be gay. But the things Iago stands for must go down into the dust: Lying and suspicion and conspiracy and lust. And I cannot hate the Kaiser (I hope you understand.) Yet I chase the thing he stands for with a brickbat in my hand.

NIAGARA

I

Within the town of Buffalo Are prosy men with leaden eyes. Like ants they worry to and fro, (Important men, in Buffalo.) But only twenty miles away A deathless glory is at play: Niagara, Niagara.

The women buy their lace and cry: — "O such a delicate design," And over ostrich feathers sigh, By counters there, in Buffalo. The children haunt the trinket shops, They buy false-faces, bells, and tops, Forgetting great Niagara.

Within the town of Buffalo Are stores with garnets, sapphires, pearls, Rubies, emeralds aglow, —

Opal chains in Buffalo, Cherished symbols of success. They value not your rainbow dress: — Niagara, Niagara.

The shaggy meaning of her name This Buffalo, this recreant town, Sharps and lawyers prune and tame: Few pioneers in Buffalo; Except young lovers flushed and fleet And winds hallooing down the street: "Niagara, Niagara."

The journalists are sick of ink: Boy prodigals are lost in wine, By night where white and red lights blink, The eyes of Death, in Buffalo. And only twenty miles away Are starlit rocks and healing spray: — Niagara, Niagara.

Above the town a tiny bird, A shining speck at sleepy dawn, Forgets the ant-hill so absurd, This self-important Buffalo.

Descending twenty miles away He bathes his wings at break of day — Niagara, Niagara.

II

What marching men of Buffalo Flood the streets in rash crusade? Fools-to-free-the-world, they go, Primeval hearts from Buffalo. Red cataracts of France today Awake, three thousand miles away An echo of Niagara, The cataract Niagara.

MARK TWAIN AND JOAN OF ARC

When Yankee soldiers reach the barricade Then Joan of Arc gives each the accolade.

For she is there in armor clad, today, All the young poets of the wide world say.

Which of our freemen did she greet the first, Seeing him come against the fires accurst?

Mark Twain, our Chief, with neither smile nor jest, Leading to war our youngest and our best.

The Yankee to King Arthur's court returns. The sacred flag of Joan above him burns.

For she has called his soul from out the tomb. And where she stands, there he will stand till doom.

. . . . . . .

But I, I can but mourn, and mourn again At bloodshed caused by angels, saints, and men.

THE BANKRUPT PEACE MAKER

I opened the ink-well and smoke filled the room. The smoke formed the giant frog-cat of my doom. His web feet left dreadful slime tracks on the floor. He had hammer and nails that he laid by the door. He sprawled on the table, claw-hands in my hair. He looked through my heart to the mud that was there. Like a black-mailer hating his victim he spoke: "When I see all your squirming I laugh till I choke Singing of peace. Railing at battle. Soothing a handful with saccharine prattle. All the millions of earth have voted for fight. You are voting for talk, with hands lily white." He leaped to the floor, then grew seven feet high, Beautiful, terrible, scorn in his eye: The Devil Eternal, Apollo grown old, With beard of bright silver and garments of gold. "What will you do to end war for good? Will you stand by the book-case, be nailed to the wood?" I stretched out my arms. He drove the nails deep, Silently, coolly. The house was asleep,

I hung for three years, forbidden to die. I seemed but a shadow the servants passed by. At the end of the time with hot irons he returned. "The Quitter Sublime" on my bosom he burned. As he seared me he hissed: "You are wearing away. The good angels tell me you leave them today. You want to come down from the nails in the door. The victor must hang there three hundred years more. If any prig-saint would outvote all mankind He must use an immortally resolute mind. Think what the saints of Benares endure, Through infinite birthpangs their courage is sure. Self-tortured, self-ruled, they build their powers high, Until they are gods, overmaster the sky." Then he pulled out the nails. He shouted "Come in." To heal me there stepped in a lady of sin. Her hand was in mine. We walked in the sun. She said: "Now forget them, the Saxon and Hun. You are dreary and aged and silly and weak. Let us smell the sweet groves. Let the summertime speak." We walked to the river. We swam there in state. I was a serpent. She was my mate. I forgot in the marsh, as I tumbled about, That trial in my room, where I did not hold out. Since I was a serpent, my mate seemed to me

As a mermaiden seems to a fisher at sea, Or a whisky soaked girl to a whisky soaked king. I woke. She had turned to a ravening thing On the table — a buzzard with leperous head. She tore up my rhymes and my drawings. She said: "I am your own cheap bankrupt soul. Will you die for the nations, making them whole? We joy in the swamp and here we are gay. Will you bring your fine peace to the nations today?"

"THIS, MY SONG, IS MADE FOR KERENSKY"

(Being a Chant of the American Soap-Box and the Russian Revolution.)

O market square, O slattern place, Is glory in your slack disgrace? Plump quack doctors sell their pills, Gentle grafters sell brass watches, Silly anarchists yell their ills. Shall we be as weird as these? In the breezes nod and wheeze?

Heaven's mass is sung, Tomorrow's mass is sung In a spirit tongue By wind and dust and birds, The high mass of liberty, While wave the banners red: Sung round the soap-box, A mass for soldiers dead.

When you leave your faction in the once-loved hall, Like a true American tongue-lash them all,

Stand then on the corner under starry skies And get you a gang of the worn and the wise. The soldiers of the Lord may be squeaky when they rally, The soldiers of the Lord are a queer little army, But the soldiers of the Lord, before the year is through, Will gather the whole nation, recruit all creation, To smite the hosts abhorred, and all the heavens renew — Enforcing with the bayonet the thing the ages teach — Free speech! Free speech!

Down with the Prussians, and all their works. Down with the Turks. Down with every army that fights against the soap-box, The Pericles, Socrates, Diogenes soap-box, The old Elijah, Jeremiah, John-the-Baptist soap-box, The Rousseau, Mirabeau, Danton soap-box, The Karl Marx, Henry George, Woodrow Wilson soap-box. We will make the wide earth safe for the soap-box, The everlasting foe of beastliness and tyranny, Platform of liberty: — Magna Charta liberty, Andrew Jackson liberty, bleeding Kansas liberty, New-born Russian liberty: — Battleship of thought, The round world over,

Loved by the red-hearted, Loved by the broken-hearted, Fair young Amazon or proud tough rover, Loved by the lion, Loved by the lion, Loved by the lion, Feared by the fox.

The Russian Revolution is the world revolution. Death at the bedstead of every Kaiser knocks. The Hohenzollern army shall be felled like the ox. The fatal hour is striking in all the doomsday clocks. The while, by freedom's alchemy Beauty is born. Ring every sleigh-bell, ring every church bell, Blow the clear trumpet, and listen for the answer: — The blast from the sky of the Gabriel horn.

Hail the Russian picture around the little box: — Exiles, Troops in files, Generals in uniform, Mujiks in their smocks, And holy maiden soldiers who have cut away their locks.

All the peoples and the nations in processions mad and great, Are rolling through the Russian Soul as through a city gate: — As though it were a street of stars that paves the shadowy deep. And mighty Tolstoi leads the van along the stairway steep.

But now the people shout: "Hail to Kerensky, He hurled the tyrants out." And this my song is made for Kerensky, Prophet of the world-wide intolerable hope, There on the soap-box, seasoned, dauntless, There amid the Russian celestial kaleidoscope, Flags of liberty, rags and battlesmoke.

Moscow and Chicago! Come let us praise battling Kerensky, Bravo! Bravo! Comrade Kerensky the thunderstorm and rainbow! Comrade Kerensky, Bravo, Bravo!

August, 1917.