Cry to Rome

(From the Tower of the Chrysler Building)

Apples with flesh-wounds
made by slender silver swords,
clouds slashed by a coral hand,
a fire-filled almond on its back,
arsenic fish like sharks,
sharks like tear-drops to blind a multitude,
roses that wound
and needles lodged in the blood’s tubes,
enemy worlds and worm-covered loves
will fall on you. On the great dome
that anoints military tongues with olive oil
where a man pisses on a luminous dove
and spits crushed coal
ringed by a thousand little bells.

Because now there’s no one to share the bread and wine,
or grow grass in the dead man’s mouth,
or unfold the linen of repose,
or to grieve over elephant wounds.
Just a million blacksmiths
forging chains for children yet unborn.
Just a million carpenters
making coffins without crosses.
Just a throng of lamentations
opening their clothes, awaiting the bullet.
The man who despises the dove should have spoken,
yelled, naked among columns,
injected himself with leprosy,
and set up a wail so dreadful
it dissolved his rings and diamond telephones.
But the man dressed in white
knows nothing of the mystery of corn,
knows nothing of the cries of a woman in labour,
doesn’t know that Christ can still give water,
doesn’t know that money burns the prodigy’s kiss
and gives lamb’s blood to the pheasant’s idiot beak.

The teachers show the children
a marvellous light coming from the mountain;
but what arrives is a union of sewers
where the dark nymphs of cholera scream.
Devoutly the teachers point out huge fumigated domes;
but beneath the statues there’s no love,
no love beneath the eyes set in crystal.
Love is there, in flesh ripped by thirst,
in the tiny hut struggling against the flood;
love is there, in ditches where snakes of hunger wrestle,
in the sad sea that rocks dead gulls,
and in the darkest stinging kiss under pillows.

But the old man with the luminous hands
will say: love, love, love,
cheered on by millions of the dying;
will say: love, love, love,
in the shimmering tissue of tenderness:
will say: peace, peace, peace,
among shivering knives and melons of dynamite;
will say: love, love, love,
until his lips turn to silver.

Meanwhile and meanwhile and meanwhile,
blacks collecting up the spittoons,
boys trembling beneath directors’ bloodless ferocity,
women drowned in mineral oils,
crowd with hammer, violin or cloud
must yell even if their brains splatter on the wall,
yell before the domes,
yell maddened by fire,
yell maddened by snow,
yell with heads full of excrement,
yell like every night in one,
yell with a voice torn terribly
until cities tremble like girls
and burst the prisons of oil and music,
because we want our daily bread,
alder-flower and everlasting harvest of tenderness,
because we want Earth’s will be done,
the Earth that gives her fruit to all.