The Syndicalist
‘DEAR, can’t you sleep?’
‘O John, I woke you?’
‘No.’
‘I think about the trenches, these cold nights.
Do you, John?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘When I hear the trolley
Whirr past the corner; when its stealthy light —
There! did you see it flit across the ceiling?
— I think of Zeppelins, and English wives
Trembling in English beds. I think of London
And Paris; all those women dressed in black.
I walk the wards of that grim hospital
In England where those Belgian nuns are keeping
Their nine months’ vigil. Do they ever sleep,
I wonder? Are they making baby clothes,
Like me? Like mine? Thornstitching little frocks?
Nuns sew so sweetly. No; I must n’t cry.
I must n’t let their faces follow me
About the dark — their Belgian faces, coiffed
And wimpled. No; I must n’t count their faces.’
‘Count sheep, dear heart.’
‘But John, they don’t stay sheep.
They turn Turk, and the British Tommies toss them
On bayonets, by twos, by tens, by hundreds,
Into the Dardanelles. They bleed. They scream.
And I lose count.’
‘My little tender heart!
I know that horror; I had nights of it
After the massacre in Colorado.’
‘A massacre in — oh, you mean those miners.
I did n’t know we used that word except —’
‘Except for what?’
‘Well, yes; perhaps it was.’
‘Perhaps?’
‘But John, the war makes all that seem
So long ago and far away and almost
Trivial.’
‘No, Dolly; find another word.’
‘You dear old darling dyed-in-the-wool fanatic,
Don’t you be trivial. John, sometimes I think
You would grow narrow if it were n’t for me.
I’d quite forgot there were such things as strikes.’
‘Well, England has n’t lost her memory yet.’
‘Welsh miners; and munitions? Oh, of course,
In an argument you’ll have me, every time;
But I was thinking of America.’
‘And in America men still are striking,
Though you’ve forgotten.’
‘Powder mills; yes, yes;
And factories for shells, and chemicals
The hyphens meddle with. I’ll eat my words
To make you happy.’
‘Just the one word, darling;
Just trivial.’
‘John! why, John! I did n’t mean —
I’ve hurt his blessèd feelings!’
‘No, sweetheart;
Not you. I’m only sore on the world in general.
And let’s be fair: the hyphenated strikes
Are not the only ones. The garment-workers
Are striking in Chicago. The police
Are beating up the pickets, àla Boche.
It may be worse in Belgium; so our papers
Here in the East don’t feature it. The war
And Wilson’s programme for preparedness
Capture the headlines. Yesterday, I tried
To sneak a paragraph in under news
Of the cotton trade, but the Old Man cut it out.
He’s on to me.’
‘You won’t be reckless, John?
You won’t forget the doctor’s bill that’s due —
Some time?’
‘A lot you trust me, don’t you, Dolly?
The Old Man’s mighty patient nowadays
With my vagaries. It’s a darned sight simpler
To kill my syndicalist rot, — blue pencil;
“The rest is silence,” — than to find another
Linguistical, cosmopolite young fellow
With all the belligerent languages under his hat.
I shan’t be fired. We’ve no need to add
Real worry to our anxiety de luxe
Over the Allies.’
‘Our anxiety
De luxe? It is n’t fair; it’s cynical
And cheap to say such things. Why will you, John?’
‘The journalistic impulse, the temptation
To turn a smart phrase, sting — no matter who.’
‘Even me?’
‘Myself even. It’s my blood that bleeds
When you are wounded.’
‘Always you make peace
Like a poet,’
‘And I’ll eat my edgy French
Like a sword-swallower. Forget it, sweet.’
‘You think I am a spiritual glutton,
Savoring sorrow, piling pity up
For thrills. You think I am an epicure,
Preferring my emotions high, like game;
Lying awake to indulge a haunted fancy
With morbid images that swell and breed
The black and bloody pageant of death. You think’ —
‘I think I’m a durned infernal ass, a brute,
To make you cry; an egotistical,
Self-centred pig, a—’
‘Now, you’ve made me laugh.
You silly John, if only you were selfish
Like other men, I might sleep quiet, nights.
It’s not the big guns booming at Verdun
That wake me, it’s my coward conscience squealing.
It’s thinking how you might be over yonder
In the thick of it, as special correspondent,
If you were free — of me — No, let me talk;
Don’t stop me with your dear, transparent fibs.
If you were free, you might be cabling copy
From France to-night; you might have been in Serbia
With Lady Paget; or at Erzeroum
Writing the story of the siege; or London
With Zeppelins overhead. And I have spoilt
All that. No, listen, John; be still; I’m talking.
The thought of you at that dull office desk
Translating censored newspapers all day,
Is on my nerves. And if I fall asleep
I dream the baby’s come — with eyes like yours,
And they reproach me. All the bestial horrors
In Belgium, all the cold brutality
Of submarine disasters, all the pathos
Of young heroic death — I heap them up;
But always over the top the baby’s eyes,
More unendurable than all the grief
Of Europe. John, you’ll go? My patient boy,
Tell me you’ll go!’
‘My precious Dollykins,
My little adorable goose, to think I’d pine
And “let concealment, like a worm i’ the bud,
Feed on my damask cheek!” — No, I’ll not laugh;
No, no; it’s too near heart-break. All her pangs,
Her wakeful, tearful hours of anguish wasted
On pain that never was.’
‘That never was?
You mean you would n’t go? I have n’t kept you?
It does n’t call you? John, are you pretending?
‘Oh, silly hearts of ours that still must play
At hide and seek! — It never, never called me.
I do not want to go.’
‘Not want, — oh, John!
It comforts me! It comforts me, no end! —
And yet — there’s something — why are you awake?
And you’re depressed, John.’
‘Am I?’
‘So depressed,
I’m lost and frightened in the cloud of you.’
‘Dearest, I’m sorry. It’s a judgment on me.
I always did despise a moody cuss.
But hark, the weather prophet: Fair to-morrow!
Now sleep.’
‘You have n’t told me.’
‘Listen here
Against my heart, dear other heart of mine;
Ears do not help; it’s nothing words can tell,
If hearts have lost the pitch.’
‘I’m listening.’
‘There was a Belgian in our place, to-day;
One of those Lawrence strikers, — you remember? —
A weaver.’
‘Lawrence! We were just engaged,
Do I remember! We were there one Sunday.’
‘And big Bill Haywood led the strikers’ meeting’ —
‘And a baby waved the red flag’ —
‘And the paper
Cut my three-column write-up to a scant
Two inches. “What’s this philanthropic gush
About free lunches furnished by the strikers?
Maison du peuple, on the Belgian model,
Run by the Franco-Belges — This your idea
Of covering a strike?” the Old Man yelped.
I said it was.’
‘How good their free lunch tasted!
And now we’re feeding them.’
‘And they can have
The front page any day, and red head-lines
Three inches high. The whole blamed office force
Stood on one leg and goggled when that weaver
Said he was Belgian. All the cubs came running
To shake his paw and languish in his eyes.
We print his brother’s letter, double column,
With fancy type. And Russia’s great campaign
In Asiatic Turkey has a map
And special photos, to instruct our readers.
But Russian Jews campaigning in Chicago
For living wage and economic freedom —
Oh, that’s not news! And yet they shed their blood.’
‘But not so much.’
‘No; measured by the quart.’
‘Finish the story of the weaver, John.’
‘That’s all. A fingerpost to my black mood.’
‘Always the workingman?’
‘Poor Dolly! always.
And yet, I’m not unmitigated crank.
I know the casualties are n’t as great
In the steel mills, killed and wounded, burned and scalded,
These eighteen murderous months, as in the trenches.
I know the Belgians face an imminent,
Abrupt starvation, more spectacular
Than all the long, slow, steady underfeeding
That saps the victims in the British slum,
And ours. — But we’ll not let the Belgians starve.
God knows, I’d be the last one to belittle
This war; I’m only saying war’s a symptom.
I’m groping for the cursed roots of death,
Not on the battlefield, the blossoming place,
But deeper. From the seed we reap the harvest;
And from our ancient, hardy, tough perennial,
Our national system, our competitive order,
How many crops of wars! I say this weed
Cumbers the ground, pollutes the innocent air.
It’s these outlived ideals that do the mischief.
They’re rank; they’re only fit to be ploughed under
For fertilizer for the tree of life.
Democracy’s new goal! Oh, let me rant!
The economic dream of the workingman:
Labor’s naïve, fantastic fellowship
Transmuting Adam’s curse to linkèd love, —
A golden net of brotherhood to hold
The wealth of the world. — And we’ve betrayed the dreamers.
Corrupted them with nationalist fears,
Confused them with our patriotic glamour,
Poisoned their loving-cup and let them drink
Distrust of one another to the dregs,
The bitter, sleepy dregs, distrust of self.
Here’s where I touch the unforgivable.
Here’s where I touch despair. — This brutish war
Has more to answer for than bodies of men.
To think of all those simple-hearted boys
Helpless in that red slaughter is bad enough;
But when a young dream’s caught in the strangle-hold
Of a dead ideal — that’s desperate. That’s death.
Unless — life can’t be conquered. There are signs.
Jaurès is dead, but Germany still suffers
Her Liebknecht’s muted protest; still endures
The intermittent pianissimo
Of Vorwaerts in the national symphony.
Signs! In the wailing of astonished voices
Uplifted in reproachful invocation
To the proletarians and socialists
They’d laughed at and berated and despised:
“ Save us! — In spite of ourselves! — You said you would!
Where is your general strike, you comrade cowards?”
Signs! An infinitude of quaint devices
Sprung from the heads of pacifists and statesmen;
Subtle and simple, and the magic label
On every one — the word we conjure with
To-day, the exalted, visionary word
The workers chose to be their countersign
For the Revolution: International! —
Our armaments; our courts of arbitration;
Our parliaments; our straits and seven seas;
Our factories for munitions; our police.
Finance?— It’s hinted.—Commerce?— Tentative
Suggestion of world-markets. — Industry? —
Ah, there you get below the slippery surface,
Behind the institution to the men.
What will the workers answer when they hear
Their countersign? The resurrection trumpet
Sounds in that reconciling battle-cry:
The International! Unite! Unite! —
Where is their general strike? Oh, trust their answer!
Venture our faith! They’ll save us yet, belovèd.
The golden net — Asleep? ’
‘O John, I woke you?’
‘No.’
‘I think about the trenches, these cold nights.
Do you, John?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘When I hear the trolley
Whirr past the corner; when its stealthy light —
There! did you see it flit across the ceiling?
— I think of Zeppelins, and English wives
Trembling in English beds. I think of London
And Paris; all those women dressed in black.
I walk the wards of that grim hospital
In England where those Belgian nuns are keeping
Their nine months’ vigil. Do they ever sleep,
I wonder? Are they making baby clothes,
Like me? Like mine? Thornstitching little frocks?
Nuns sew so sweetly. No; I must n’t cry.
I must n’t let their faces follow me
About the dark — their Belgian faces, coiffed
And wimpled. No; I must n’t count their faces.’
‘Count sheep, dear heart.’
‘But John, they don’t stay sheep.
They turn Turk, and the British Tommies toss them
On bayonets, by twos, by tens, by hundreds,
Into the Dardanelles. They bleed. They scream.
And I lose count.’
‘My little tender heart!
I know that horror; I had nights of it
After the massacre in Colorado.’
‘A massacre in — oh, you mean those miners.
I did n’t know we used that word except —’
‘Except for what?’
‘Well, yes; perhaps it was.’
‘Perhaps?’
‘But John, the war makes all that seem
So long ago and far away and almost
Trivial.’
‘No, Dolly; find another word.’
‘You dear old darling dyed-in-the-wool fanatic,
Don’t you be trivial. John, sometimes I think
You would grow narrow if it were n’t for me.
I’d quite forgot there were such things as strikes.’
‘Well, England has n’t lost her memory yet.’
‘Welsh miners; and munitions? Oh, of course,
In an argument you’ll have me, every time;
But I was thinking of America.’
‘And in America men still are striking,
Though you’ve forgotten.’
‘Powder mills; yes, yes;
And factories for shells, and chemicals
The hyphens meddle with. I’ll eat my words
To make you happy.’
‘Just the one word, darling;
Just trivial.’
‘John! why, John! I did n’t mean —
I’ve hurt his blessèd feelings!’
‘No, sweetheart;
Not you. I’m only sore on the world in general.
And let’s be fair: the hyphenated strikes
Are not the only ones. The garment-workers
Are striking in Chicago. The police
Are beating up the pickets, àla Boche.
It may be worse in Belgium; so our papers
Here in the East don’t feature it. The war
And Wilson’s programme for preparedness
Capture the headlines. Yesterday, I tried
To sneak a paragraph in under news
Of the cotton trade, but the Old Man cut it out.
He’s on to me.’
‘You won’t be reckless, John?
You won’t forget the doctor’s bill that’s due —
Some time?’
‘A lot you trust me, don’t you, Dolly?
The Old Man’s mighty patient nowadays
With my vagaries. It’s a darned sight simpler
To kill my syndicalist rot, — blue pencil;
“The rest is silence,” — than to find another
Linguistical, cosmopolite young fellow
With all the belligerent languages under his hat.
I shan’t be fired. We’ve no need to add
Real worry to our anxiety de luxe
Over the Allies.’
‘Our anxiety
De luxe? It is n’t fair; it’s cynical
And cheap to say such things. Why will you, John?’
‘The journalistic impulse, the temptation
To turn a smart phrase, sting — no matter who.’
‘Even me?’
‘Myself even. It’s my blood that bleeds
When you are wounded.’
‘Always you make peace
Like a poet,’
‘And I’ll eat my edgy French
Like a sword-swallower. Forget it, sweet.’
‘You think I am a spiritual glutton,
Savoring sorrow, piling pity up
For thrills. You think I am an epicure,
Preferring my emotions high, like game;
Lying awake to indulge a haunted fancy
With morbid images that swell and breed
The black and bloody pageant of death. You think’ —
‘I think I’m a durned infernal ass, a brute,
To make you cry; an egotistical,
Self-centred pig, a—’
‘Now, you’ve made me laugh.
You silly John, if only you were selfish
Like other men, I might sleep quiet, nights.
It’s not the big guns booming at Verdun
That wake me, it’s my coward conscience squealing.
It’s thinking how you might be over yonder
In the thick of it, as special correspondent,
If you were free — of me — No, let me talk;
Don’t stop me with your dear, transparent fibs.
If you were free, you might be cabling copy
From France to-night; you might have been in Serbia
With Lady Paget; or at Erzeroum
Writing the story of the siege; or London
With Zeppelins overhead. And I have spoilt
All that. No, listen, John; be still; I’m talking.
The thought of you at that dull office desk
Translating censored newspapers all day,
Is on my nerves. And if I fall asleep
I dream the baby’s come — with eyes like yours,
And they reproach me. All the bestial horrors
In Belgium, all the cold brutality
Of submarine disasters, all the pathos
Of young heroic death — I heap them up;
But always over the top the baby’s eyes,
More unendurable than all the grief
Of Europe. John, you’ll go? My patient boy,
Tell me you’ll go!’
‘My precious Dollykins,
My little adorable goose, to think I’d pine
And “let concealment, like a worm i’ the bud,
Feed on my damask cheek!” — No, I’ll not laugh;
No, no; it’s too near heart-break. All her pangs,
Her wakeful, tearful hours of anguish wasted
On pain that never was.’
‘That never was?
You mean you would n’t go? I have n’t kept you?
It does n’t call you? John, are you pretending?
‘Oh, silly hearts of ours that still must play
At hide and seek! — It never, never called me.
I do not want to go.’
‘Not want, — oh, John!
It comforts me! It comforts me, no end! —
And yet — there’s something — why are you awake?
And you’re depressed, John.’
‘Am I?’
‘So depressed,
I’m lost and frightened in the cloud of you.’
‘Dearest, I’m sorry. It’s a judgment on me.
I always did despise a moody cuss.
But hark, the weather prophet: Fair to-morrow!
Now sleep.’
‘You have n’t told me.’
‘Listen here
Against my heart, dear other heart of mine;
Ears do not help; it’s nothing words can tell,
If hearts have lost the pitch.’
‘I’m listening.’
‘There was a Belgian in our place, to-day;
One of those Lawrence strikers, — you remember? —
A weaver.’
‘Lawrence! We were just engaged,
Do I remember! We were there one Sunday.’
‘And big Bill Haywood led the strikers’ meeting’ —
‘And a baby waved the red flag’ —
‘And the paper
Cut my three-column write-up to a scant
Two inches. “What’s this philanthropic gush
About free lunches furnished by the strikers?
Maison du peuple, on the Belgian model,
Run by the Franco-Belges — This your idea
Of covering a strike?” the Old Man yelped.
I said it was.’
‘How good their free lunch tasted!
And now we’re feeding them.’
‘And they can have
The front page any day, and red head-lines
Three inches high. The whole blamed office force
Stood on one leg and goggled when that weaver
Said he was Belgian. All the cubs came running
To shake his paw and languish in his eyes.
We print his brother’s letter, double column,
With fancy type. And Russia’s great campaign
In Asiatic Turkey has a map
And special photos, to instruct our readers.
But Russian Jews campaigning in Chicago
For living wage and economic freedom —
Oh, that’s not news! And yet they shed their blood.’
‘But not so much.’
‘No; measured by the quart.’
‘Finish the story of the weaver, John.’
‘That’s all. A fingerpost to my black mood.’
‘Always the workingman?’
‘Poor Dolly! always.
And yet, I’m not unmitigated crank.
I know the casualties are n’t as great
In the steel mills, killed and wounded, burned and scalded,
These eighteen murderous months, as in the trenches.
I know the Belgians face an imminent,
Abrupt starvation, more spectacular
Than all the long, slow, steady underfeeding
That saps the victims in the British slum,
And ours. — But we’ll not let the Belgians starve.
God knows, I’d be the last one to belittle
This war; I’m only saying war’s a symptom.
I’m groping for the cursed roots of death,
Not on the battlefield, the blossoming place,
But deeper. From the seed we reap the harvest;
And from our ancient, hardy, tough perennial,
Our national system, our competitive order,
How many crops of wars! I say this weed
Cumbers the ground, pollutes the innocent air.
It’s these outlived ideals that do the mischief.
They’re rank; they’re only fit to be ploughed under
For fertilizer for the tree of life.
Democracy’s new goal! Oh, let me rant!
The economic dream of the workingman:
Labor’s naïve, fantastic fellowship
Transmuting Adam’s curse to linkèd love, —
A golden net of brotherhood to hold
The wealth of the world. — And we’ve betrayed the dreamers.
Corrupted them with nationalist fears,
Confused them with our patriotic glamour,
Poisoned their loving-cup and let them drink
Distrust of one another to the dregs,
The bitter, sleepy dregs, distrust of self.
Here’s where I touch the unforgivable.
Here’s where I touch despair. — This brutish war
Has more to answer for than bodies of men.
To think of all those simple-hearted boys
Helpless in that red slaughter is bad enough;
But when a young dream’s caught in the strangle-hold
Of a dead ideal — that’s desperate. That’s death.
Unless — life can’t be conquered. There are signs.
Jaurès is dead, but Germany still suffers
Her Liebknecht’s muted protest; still endures
The intermittent pianissimo
Of Vorwaerts in the national symphony.
Signs! In the wailing of astonished voices
Uplifted in reproachful invocation
To the proletarians and socialists
They’d laughed at and berated and despised:
“ Save us! — In spite of ourselves! — You said you would!
Where is your general strike, you comrade cowards?”
Signs! An infinitude of quaint devices
Sprung from the heads of pacifists and statesmen;
Subtle and simple, and the magic label
On every one — the word we conjure with
To-day, the exalted, visionary word
The workers chose to be their countersign
For the Revolution: International! —
Our armaments; our courts of arbitration;
Our parliaments; our straits and seven seas;
Our factories for munitions; our police.
Finance?— It’s hinted.—Commerce?— Tentative
Suggestion of world-markets. — Industry? —
Ah, there you get below the slippery surface,
Behind the institution to the men.
What will the workers answer when they hear
Their countersign? The resurrection trumpet
Sounds in that reconciling battle-cry:
The International! Unite! Unite! —
Where is their general strike? Oh, trust their answer!
Venture our faith! They’ll save us yet, belovèd.
The golden net — Asleep? ’