Only the power machines drone with metallic docility under the flaxen head of the foreman poised like an amazed gull.

II

To-day little French merchant men with pointed beards and fat American merchant men without any beards drive to a feast of buttered squabs.  The band... accoutered and neatly caparisoned...
     plays the Marseillaise.... 
And I think of a wild stallion... newly caught... flanks yet taut and nostrils spread to the smell of a racing mare, hitched to a grocer’s cart.

REVEILLE

Come forth, you workers! 
Let the fires go cold—­
Let the iron spill out, out of the troughs—­
Let the iron run wild
Like a red bramble on the floors—­
Leave the mill and the foundry and the mine
And the shrapnel lying on the wharves—­
Leave the desk and the shuttle and the loom—­
Come,
With your ashen lives,
Your lives like dust in your hands.

I call upon you, workers. 
It is not yet light
But I beat upon your doors. 
You say you await the Dawn
But I say you are the Dawn. 
Come, in your irresistible unspent force
And make new light upon the mountains.

You have turned deaf ears to others—­
Me you shall hear. 
Out of the mouths of turbines,
Out of the turgid throats of engines,
Over the whistling steam,
You shall hear me shrilly piping. 
Your mills I shall enter like the wind,
And blow upon your hearts,
Kindling the slow fire.

They think they have tamed you, workers—­
Beaten you to a tool
To scoop up hot honor
Till it be cool—­
But out of the passion of the red frontiers
A great flower trembles and burns and glows
And each of its petals is a people.

Come forth, you workers—­
Clinging to your stable
And your wisp of warm straw—­
Let the fires grow cold,
Let the iron spill out of the troughs,
Let the iron run wild
Like a red bramble on the floors....

As our forefathers stood on the prairies
So let us stand in a ring,
Let us tear up their prisons like grass
And beat them to barricades—­
Let us meet the fire of their guns
With a greater fire,
Till the birds shall fly to the mountains
For one safe bough.

TO ALEXANDER BERKMAN

Can you see me, Sasha? 
I can see you.... 
A tentacle of the vast dawn is resting on your face
that floats as though detached
in a sultry and greenish vapor. 
I cannot reach my hands to you...
would not if I could,
though I know how warmly yours would close about them. 
Why? 
I do not know... 
I have a sense of shame. 
Your eyes hurt me... mysterious openings in the gray stone of your face
through which your spirit streams out taut as a flag
bearing strange symbols to the new dawn.