Читать книгу Selected Works of Voltairine de Cleyre - Voltairine De Cleyre - Страница 17

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Who am I? Only one of the commonest common people,

Only a worked-out body, a shriveled and withered soul,

What right have I to sing then? None; and I do not, I cannot.

Why ruin the rhythm and rhyme of the great world's songs with moaning?

I know not—nor why whistles must shriek, wheels ceaselessly mutter;

Nor why all I touch turns to clanging and clashing and discord;

I know not;—I know only this—I was born to this, live in it hourly,

Go round with it, hum with it, curse with it, would laugh with it, had it laughter;

It is my breath—and that breath goes outward from me in moaning.

O you, up there, I have heard you; I am "God's image defaced,"

"In heaven reward awaits me," "hereafter I shall be perfect";

Ages you've sung that song, but what is it to me, think you?

If you heard down here in the smoke and the smut, in the smear and the offal,

In the dust, in the mire, in the grime and in the slime, in the hideous darkness,

How the wheels turn your song into sounds of horror and loathing and cursing,

The offer of lust, the sneer of contempt and acceptance, thieves' whispers,

The laugh of the gambler, the suicide's gasp, the yell of the drunkard,

If you heard them down here you would cry, "The reward of such is damnation,"

If you heard them, I say, your song of "rewarded hereafter" would fail.

You, too, with your science, your titles, your books, and your long explanations

That tell me how I am come up out of the dust of the cycles,

Out of the sands of the sea, out of the unknown primeval forests—

Out of the growth of the world have become the bud and the promise,

Out of the race of the beasts have arisen, proud and triumphant—

You, if you knew how your words rumble round in the wheels of labor!

If you knew how my hammering heart beats, "Liar, liar, you lie!

Out of all buds of the earth we are most blasted and blighted!

What beast of all the beasts is not prouder and freer than we?"

You, too, who sing in high words of the glory of Man universal,

The beauty of sacrifice, debt of the future, the present immortal,

The glory of use, absorption by Death of the being in Being,

You, if you knew what jargon it makes, down here, would be quiet.

Oh, is there no one to find or to speak a meaning to me, To me as I am—the hard, the ignorant, withered-souled worker? To me upon whom God and Science alike have stamped "failure," To me who know nothing but labor, nothing but sweat, dirt, and sorrow, To me whom you scorn and despise, you up there who sing while I moan? To me as I am—for me as I am—not dying but living; Not my future, my present! my body, my needs, my desires! Is there no one, In the midst of this rushing of phantoms—of Gods, of Science, of Logic, Of Philosophy, Morals, Religion, Economy—all this that helps not, All these ghosts at whose altars you worship, these ponderous, marrowless Fictions, Is there no one who thinks, is there nothing to help this dull moaning me?

Philadelphia, April, 1893.