Cry to Rome

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

in the tiny hut struggling against the

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

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.

LORCA