When the Leaves Come Out/The Red Feast
THE RED FEAST
Go fight, you fools, your needless, gainless strife
And spill each others guts upon the field!
Serve unto death the men you served in life
So that their wide dominions may not yield.
Stand by the flag—the lie that still allures—
Lay down your lives for land you do not own.
And give unto a war that is not yours
Your gory tithe of mangled flesh and bone.
Ah, slaves, you fight your masters' battles well—
The reek of rotting carnage fills the air!
Your swollen bodies yield their noisome smell,
Sweet incense to the ghouls who sent you there . . .
A feast of mothers' pain is here laid low
For swarming insects hovering on high.
Grey rats, red muzzled through the trenches go
Where your death-tortured features face the sky.
The maggots riot now on rotting men.
The grass is greener than it was before.
But as the dead cannot return again
The ones who live must wage another war.
So stagger back, you stupid dupes who've "won",
Back to your stricken towns to toil anew,
For there your dismal tasks are still undone,
And grim Starvation gropes again for you.
What matters now your flag, your race, the skill
Of scattered legions—what has been the gain?
Once more beneath the lash you must distil
Your lives to glut a glory wrought of pain.
In peace they starve you to your loathsome toil,
In war they drive you to the teeth of Death;
And when your life-blood soaks into their soil
They give you lies to choke your dying breath.
So will they smite your blind eyes till you see,
And lash your naked backs until you know
That wasted blood can never set you free
From fettered thralldom to the Common Foe.
Then you will find that "Nation" is a name;
That boundaries are things that don't exist;
That Labor's bondage, worldwide, is the same,
And ONE the enemy it must resist!
1914
