Explore "Marsh-Bloom" by Voltairine De Cleyre on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
(To Gaetano Bresci.)
Requiem, requiem, requiem, / Blood-red blossom of poison stem / Broken for Man, / Swamp-sunk leafage and dungeon bloom, / Seeded bearer of royal doom, / What now is the ban?
What to thee is the island grave?
With desert wind and desolate wave / Will they silence Death?
Can they weight thee now with the heaviest stone?
Can they lay aught on thee with "Be alone,"
That hast conquered breath?
Lo, "it is finished" -- a man for a king!
Mark you well who have done this thing: / The flower has roots; / Bitter and rank grow the things of the sea; / Ye shall know what sap ran thick in the tree / When ye pluck its fruits.
Requiem, requiem, requiem, / Sleep on, sleep on, accursed of them / Who work our pain; / A wild Marsh-blossom shall blow again / From a buried root in the slime of men, / On the day of the Great Red Rain.
Philadelphia, July, 1901.