Echoes from an Anvil

I leave to paltry poets

The tabor and the lute;

I sing in drums and tom-toms

The black abysmal brute –

My voice is of the people,

That giant wild and mute.

(With blood of all the ages

His broken nails are black,

The whole world weights and burdens

His hairy bestial back;

He shambles down forever

A blind and tangled track.)

I bring no polished diamonds,

No gems from London town;

No cultured whim or fancy

My rugged verses crown;

You find here naught but power

That breaks a city down.

I spill no words of beauty,

Coins from a silver purse,

My hands are built of iron,

And iron is in my verse.

I bring no love but fury,

No blessing but a curse.

My low pitched brow is slanting,

My eyes are burning red,

With fierce black primal visions

That thunder in my head;

Behind my heart the rivers

And all the jungles spread.

I slaved in star-girt Babel

And labored at the wall;

I watched the birth of pavements

Beneath my slugging maul –

And in a frenzied dawning

I saw her towers fall.

I toiled in Tuscan vineyards,

I broke the beaten loam,

I strained against the mallet

That drove the chisel home;

I sweated in the galleys

That broke the road to Rome.

Oh, Khan and king and pharaoh!

In cold and drouth and heat

I bled to build your glory,

An ant beneath your feet –

But always rose a morning

When blood ran in the street.

The world upon my shoulders

Knee deep in muck and silt,

My hand beneath my tatters

Still grips the hidden hilt –

Who fed the ancient rivers

With blood rebellions spilt?