Proletaria

THE SUNNY rounds of Earth contain   
 An obverse to its Day,   
Our fertile Vagrancy’s domain,   
 Wan Proletaria.   
  
From pole to pole of Poverty           
 We stumble through the years,   
With hazy-lanterned Memory   
 And Hope that never nears.   
  
Wherever Plenty’s crop invites   
 Our pitiful brigades,           
Lurk cannoneers of Vested Rights,   
 Juristic ambuscades;   
  
And here hangs Rent, that squalid cage   
 Within which Mammon thrusts,   
Bound with the fetter of a wage,           
 The helots of his lusts.   
  
With palsied Doubt as guide, we wind   
 Among the lanes of Need,   
Where meagre Hungers scouting find   
 But slavered baits of Greed.           
  
The wet-lipped Lamias of Caste,   
 Awaiting our advance,   
Our choicest squadrons’ fealty blast   
 With magic smile and glance:   
  
Delilah-limbed temptations flit           
 Among our drowsy rows,   
And on our willing captains fit   
 The badges of our foes.   
  
What wonder sometimes if in stealth   
 Our starker outposts wait,           
And, in the prowling eyes of Wealth,   
 Dash vitriol of Hate;   
  
Or if our Samsons, ere too late,   
 Their treasons should make good   
By whelming in the temple’s fate           
 Their viper owners’ brood!   
  
Our polyandrous dam has borne   
 To Satan and to God   
The hordes of Night, the clans of Morn,   
 That through our valleys plod.           
  
Ah, motherhood of misery   
 For Christ-child as for pest!   
The greater her fertility   
 The drier grows her breast!   
  
Too many linger on the track;           
 A few outstrip the time:   
Some, God has tattooed yellow, black,   
 And some disguised with crime.   
  
Art’s living archives here abound,   
 Carraras of Despair,           
And those weird masks of Sight and Sound   
 The Tragic Muses wear.   
  
Tho’ blind and dull, ’tis we supply   
 The Painter’s dazzling dreams;   
The rolling flood of Poetry           
 From our dumb chaos streams.   
  
Nay, when your world is over-tired,   
 And Genius comatose,   
Our race, by Nemesis inspired,   
 Old Order overthrows:           
  
With earthquake-life we thrill your land,   
 Refill the cruse of Art,   
Revitalize spent Wisdom, and—   
 Resume our weary part.   
  
The palace of successful Guilt           
 Is mortared with our shame;   
On hecatombs of Us are built   
 The soaring towers of Fame.   
  
We are the gnomes of Titan works   
 Whose throbbings never cease;           
Our unregarded signet lurks   
 On every masterpiece.   
  
The floating isles, that shuttling tie   
 All peoples into one   
By adept steermen’s sorcery           
 Of magnet, steam, and sun;   
  
Religion’s dolmens, Sphinxes, spires,   
 Her Biblic armouries;   
The helot lightning of the wires   
 That mesh your lands and seas;           
  
The viaducts ’tween Near and Far,   
 Whereon, o’er range and mead,   
Bacchantic Trade’s triumphant car   
 And iron tigers speed;   
  
The modern steely crops that rise           
 Where technic Jasons sow:   
—All these but feebly symbolize   
 The largesse we bestow.   
  
And our reward? In this wan land,   
 In clientage of Greed,         
Despised, polluted, maimed and banned,   
 To wander and—to breed