MUSIC:
FAMOUS ANTI-WAR SONGS:

It's almost time to close out another Remembrance Day, but just to leave you with something a little less dry here's a couple of songs that give something other than a glorification of militarism. Yeah I know, just when you thought you were finally really and truly free of 'Molly's Poetry Corner'. Well I promise you no 'high culture' this time. No promises for the future.
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'AND THE BAND PLAYED WALTZING MATILDA'

It seems like this should be the granddaddy of them all, but this was actually written in 1971 by singer songwriter Eric Brogle. It tells a story of an old Australian veteran and his bitter thoughts at the commemoration of ANZAC Day, the Australian version of Remembrance Day and Veterans' Day. You can hear this song sung by Marjorie Roswell at this link.


AND THE BAND PLAYED
WALTZING MATILDA
When I was a young man I carried my pack
And I lived the free life of a rover
From the Murrays green basin to the dusty outback
I waltzed my Matilda all over
Then in nineteen fifteen my country said Son
It's time to stop rambling 'cause there's work to be done
So they gave me a tin hat and they gave me a gun
And they sent me away to the war
And the band played Waltzing Matilda
As we sailed away from the quay
And amidst all the tears and the shouts and the cheers
We sailed off to Gallipoli

How well I remember that terrible day
How the blood stained the sand and the water
And how in that hell that they called Suvla Bay
We were butchered like lambs at the slaughter
Johnny Turk he was ready, he primed himself well
He chased us with bullets, he rained us with shells
And in five minutes flat he'd blown us all to hell
Nearly blew us right back to Australia
But the band played Waltzing Matilda
As we stopped to bury our slain
We buried ours and the Turks buried theirs
Then we started all over again

Now those that were left, well we tried to survive
In a mad world of blood, death and fire
And for ten weary weeks I kept myself alive
But around me the corpses piled higher
Then a big Turkish shell knocked me arse over tit
And when I woke up in my hospital bed
And saw what it had done, I wished I was dead
Never knew there were worse things than dying
For no more I'll go waltzing Matilda
All around the green bush far and near
For to hump tent and pegs, a man needs two legs
No more waltzing Matilda for me

So they collected the cripples, the wounded, the maimed
And they shipped us back home to Australia
The armless, the legless, the blind, the insane
Those proud wounded heroes of Suvla
And as our ship pulled into Circular Quay
I looked at the place where my legs used to be
And thank Christ there was nobody waiting for me
To grieve and to mourn and to pity
And the band played Waltzing Matilda
As they carried us down the gangway
But nobody cheered, they just stood and stared
Then turned all their faces away

And now every April I sit on my porch
And I watch the parade pass before me
And I watch my old comrades, how proudly they march
Reliving old dreams of past glory
And the old men march slowly, all bent, stiff and sore
The forgotten heroes from a forgotten war
And the young people ask, "What are they marching for?"
And I ask myself the same question
And the band plays Waltzing Matilda
And the old men answer to the call
But year after year their numbers get fewer
Some day no one will march there at all

Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda
Who'll come a waltzing Matilda with me
And their ghosts may be heard as you pass the Billabong
Who'll come-a-waltzing Matilda with me?

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Here's another one, 'I Ain't Marching Anymore' by Phil Ochs. This was originally released in 1965 for the album of the same name during a period of time when America's war in Vietnam was building up. This song became Ochs' most famous piece. It takes the point of view of a soldier from all the wars in American history from 1812 on. You can see a video of Ochs performing this song at this link.
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Phil Ochs
I Ain't Marching Anymore

Oh I marched to the battle of new orleans
At the end of the early british war
The young land started growing
The young blood started flowing
But I ain't marchin' anymore

For I've killed my share of indians
In a thousand different fights
I was there at the little big horn
I heard many men lying
I saw many more dying
But I ain't marchin' anymore

It's always the old to lead us to the war
It's always the young to fall
Now look at all we've won with the sabre and the gun
Tell me is it worth it all

For I stole california from the mexican land
Fought in the bloody civil war
Yes I even killed my brother
And so many others
And I ain't marchin' anymore

For I marched to the battles of the german trench
In a war that was bound to end all wars
Oh I must have killed a million men
And now they want me back again
But I ain't marchin' anymore

(chorus)

For I flew the final mission in the japanese sky
Set off the mighty mushroom roar
When I saw the cities burning
I knew that I was learning
That I ain't marchin' anymore

Now the labor leader's screamin' when they close the missile plants,
United fruit screams at the cuban shore,
Call it "peace" or call it "treason,"
Call it "love" or call it "reason,"
But I ain't marchin' any more.
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Finally we have Buffy Ste. Marie's 'Universal Soldier'. A little local patriotism here. Ste. Marie was born a mere 20 miles or so from where I grew up in the Quapelle Valley. this song debuted in 1964. it gathered little attention at first but took off when it was rerecorded by folk singer Donovan in 1965. You can see various videos of Ste. Marie performing this song at this link.
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Universal Soldier
Buffy Sainte-Marie
He's five feet two and he's six feet four
He fights with missiles and with spears
He's all of 31 and he's only 17
He's been a soldier for a thousand years

He's a Catholic, a Hindu, an atheist, a Jain,
a Buddhist and a Baptist and a Jew
and he knows he shouldn't kill
and he knows he always will
kill you for me my friend and me for you

And he's fighting for Canada,
he's fighting for France,
he's fighting for the USA,
and he's fighting for the Russians
and he's fighting for Japan,
and he thinks we'll put an end to war this way

And he's fighting for Democracy
and fighting for the Reds
He says it's for the peace of all
He's the one who must decide
who's to live and who's to die
and he never sees the writing on the walls

But without him how would Hitler have
condemned him at Dachau
Without him Caesar would have stood alone
He's the one who gives his body
as a weapon to a war
and without him all this killing can't go on

He's the universal soldier and he
really is to blame
His orders come from far away no more
They come from him, and you, and me
and brothers can't you see
this is not the way we put an end to war.

MOLLY'S POETRY CORNER:

KENNETH REXROTH:

"Once upon a midnight dreary,

while Molly pondered weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,

While I nodded nearly napping,

suddenly there came a tapping,

As of some one gently rapping,

rapping at my chamber door-

'Tis some visitor, I muttered,

'tapping at my chamber door-Only this, and nothing more".

Wrong again. Just when you thought it was safe to hit the absinthe and laudanum once more the cultural raven maven brings you another edition of 'Molly's Poetry Corner'. Our subject this time around is the American anarchist poet Kenneth Rexroth (1905-1982). Rexroth actually lived a somewhat pedestrian life as compared to some of the poets featured here before. After being orphaned by the age of 13 he went to live with an aunt in Chicago where he enrolled in the Art Institute of Chicago. The only truly outré aspect of his life occurred there when he was arrested at a raid on one of the bars that he frequented in either 1923 or 1924. He was charged with being part owner of a brothel on the bar premises. If true it would show precocious enterprise as he would have been only 18 or 19 at the time. Or maybe that was just his bar tab.

While in Chicago Rexroth became involved with the anarchist movement and was also active in the IWW. This remained with him throughout his life and informed much of his subsequent literary work. In his time in Chicago he gained a reputation as a "soapbox poet". During WW2 he was an conscientious objector, and he worked during the duration to help Japanese Americans avoid internment. Other interests included poetry from a number of different cultures, and in addition to his own work Rexroth was the author of numerous translations of poetry from Greek, French, Chinese and Japanese, concentrating on the work of women authors.

Much of Rexroth's life was spent in California where he associated with the anarchists and was briefly (1968-1973) a lecturer at the University of California in Santa Barbara. While he was popular with the students he was an irritant to the administration. He was a seminal member of the 'Beat Poets', acting as "master of ceremonies" at the 1955 'Six Gallery Reading' where Allen Ginsberg first read 'Howl'. He was later a defence witness for Ginsberg at the obscenity trial that resulted from this event. When Rexroth died in 1982 he was buried in the Santa Barbara Cemetery Association graveyard, his grave being the only one to face outwards to the sea. His epitaph reads, "As the full moon rises/The swan sings in sleep/On the lake of the mind".

You can read more about Rexroth in the link above. Almost all of his works, poetic and otherwise, are available at the Bureau of Public Secrets website. In addition to his literary output he was a prolific writer on many other subjects, political and otherwise. This blog has previously published one of his essays on 'the police' back in 2008. The following poem 'From the Paris Commune To The Kronstadt Rebellion' was originally published in 1936.

@P@P@P@P@P
FROM THE PARIS COMMUNE TO
THE KRONSTADT REBELLION
Remember now there were others before this;
Now when the unwanted hours rise up,
And the sun rises red in unknown quarters,
And the constellations change places,
And cloudless thunder erases the furrows,
And moonlight stains and the stars grow hot.
Though the air is fetid, conscripted fathers,
With the black bloat of your dead faces;
Though men wander idling out of factories
Where turbine and hand are both freezing;
And the air clears at last above the chimneys;
Though mattresses curtain the windows;
And every hour hears the snarl of explosion;
Yet one shall rise up alone saying:
“I am one out of many, I have heard
Voices high in the air crying out commands;
Seen men’s bodies burst into torches;
Seen faun and maiden die in the night air raids;
Heard the watchwords exchanged in the alleys;
Felt hate speed the blood stream and fear curl the nerves.
I know too the last heavy maggot;
And know the trapped vertigo of impotence.
I have traveled prone and unwilling
In the dense processions through the shaken streets.
Shall we hang thus by taut navel strings
To this corrupt placenta till we’re flyblown;
Till our skulls are cracked by crow and kite
And our members become the business of ants,
Our teeth the collection of magpies?”
They shall rise up heroes, there will be many,
None will prevail against them at last.
They go saying each: “I am one of many”;
Their hands empty save for history.
They die at bridges, bridge gates, and drawbridges.
Remember now there were others before;
The sepulchres are full at ford and bridgehead.
There will be children with flowers there,
And lambs and golden-eyed lions there,
And people remembering in the future.

MOLLY'S POETRY CORNER:
'MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT' BY VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE:


When that sumyr with his showers soote
The drute of March hath pierced to the roote
and bathed every vein in swich lickoor
Of which virtu engendred is the flur.


Then longen folke to go on pilgramage
Molly's poetry corner for to seeke
To bringen smyle onto the face
And cure the souls that are fair saike.


-With apologies to Geofrey.


Yes folks, it's that time again. Our author for the day is Voltairine de Cleyre, and we begin with her poem 'Mary Wollstonecraft'.

ABOUT THE POET:

The American anarchist Voltairine de Cleyre (1866-1912) oddly enough was the product of a Catholic convent school in Sarnia Ontario. Like many others this inspired a lifelong aversion to religion, and De Cleyre's first efforts after graduation were in the freethought movement. She became an anarchist because of the hanging of the Haymarket martyrs in 1887. From 1889 to 1910 she lived in Philadephia where she taught English and music to Jewish immigrants. She began as an "individualist anarchist", but her views evolved during her lifetime to embrace more of the socialist anarchism. Her final position was of an "anarchism without adjectives". While not as widely known as her contemporary Emma Goldman she was certainly the better writer. Her most famous essay was the 1912 'Direct Action'. You can read more about De Cleyre and read much of her works at the Voltairine de Cleyre website. There is also an extensive selection in the de Cletre section of the Molineri Institute online library.


ABOUT THE SUBJECT OF THE POEM:

One of the formative influences on the young de Cleyre was the British writer, philosopher and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797). To read of Wollstonecraft's life is like reading a mini history of the intellectual life of the late 18th century. Names such as Thomas Paine, William Wordsworth, William Godwin, Jane Arden and, of course, her daughter Mary Shelley of Frankenstein fame appear and reappear. Wollstonecraft was very much the polymath, and her writings include novels, political tracts, travel books and a children's book. She first came to attention with her 'Vindication of the Rights of Men', published as a riposte to Edmund Burke's conservative 'Reflections on the Revolution in France'. This work was published in 1790, one year before Thomas Paine's similarly titled 'The Rights of Man'. The work for which she is most famous today is her 'A Vindication of the Rights of Woman' published in 1792. This established her as perhaps the founding feminist philosopher, and her influence has percolated through the various waves of feminism, and each generation of feminists has rediscovered Wollstonecraft in their own way just as de Cleyre did..


The following poem about Wollstonecraft by de Cleyre was first published in 1893.


Mary Wollstonecraft
The dust of a hundred years
Is on thy breast,
And thy day and thy night of tears
Are centurine rest.
Thou to whom joy was dumb,
Life a broken rhyme,
Lo, thy smiling time is come,
And our weeping time.
Thou who hadst sponge and myrrh
And a bitter cross,
Smile, for the day is here
That we know our loss;—
Loss of thine undone deed,
Thy unfinished song,
Th' unspoken word for our need,
Th' unrighted wrong;
Smile, for we weep, we weep,
For the unsoothed pain,
The unbound wound burned deep,
That we might gain.
Mother of sorrowful eyes
In the dead old days,
Mother of many sighs,
Of pain-shod ways;
Mother of resolute feet
Through all the thorns,
Mother soul-strong, soul-sweet,—
Lo, after storms
Have broken and beat thy dust
For a hundred years,
Thy memory is made just,
And the just man hears.

Thy children kneel and repeat:
"Though dust be dust,
Though sod and coffin and sheet
And moth and rust
Have folded and molded and pressed,
Yet they cannot kill;
In the heart of the world at rest
She liveth still."

— Philadelphia, 27th April 1893

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A good source for de Cleyre's poetry is the 'Collected Poems by Voltairine de Cleyre' at the online 'Anarchist Library'. Here's another example of her work.
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Life or Death
A Soul, half through the Gate, said unto Life:
“What dos thou offer me?” And Life replied:
“Sorrow, unceasing struggle, disappointment;
after these
Darkness and silence.” The Soul said unto Death:
“What dos thou offer me?” And Death replied:
“In the beginning what Life gives at last.”
Turning to Life: “And if I live and struggle?”
“Others shall live and struggle after thee
Counting it easier where thou hast passed.”
“And by their struggles?” “Easier place shall be
For others, still to rise to keener pain
Of conquering Agony!” “and what have I
To do with all these others? Who are they?”
“Yourself!” “And all who went before?” “Yourself.”
“The darkness and the silence, too, have end?”
“They end in light and sound; peace ends in pain,
Death ends in Me, and thou must glide from
Self
To Self, as light to shade and shade to light again.
Choose!” The Soul, sighing, answered: “I will live.”

Philadelphia, May 1892

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Finally here is de Cleyre's last poem written shortly before her death. A tribute to the heroes of the Mexican Revolution, many of them anarchists.

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Written — in — Red
To Our Living Dead
in Mexico's Struggle

Written in red their protest stands,
For the gods of the World to see;
On the dooming wall their bodiless hands
have blazoned “Upharsin,” and flaring brands
Illumine the message: “Seize the lands!
Open the prisons and make men free!”
Flame out the living words of the dead
Written — in — red.

gods of the World! Their mouths are dumb!
Your guns have spoken and they are dust.
But the shrouded Living, whose hearts were numb,
have felt the beat of a wakening drum
Within them sounding-the Dead men's tongue —
Calling: “Smite off the ancient rust!”
Have beheld “Resurrexit,” the word of the Dead,
Written — in — red.

Bear it aloft, O roaring, flame!
Skyward aloft, where all may see.
Slaves of the World! Our caose is the same;
One is the immemorial shame;
One is the struggle, and in One name —
Manhood — we battle to set men free.
“Uncurse us the Land!” burn the words of the
Dead,
Written — in — red.

Voltairine deCleyre's last poem.

MOLLY'S POETRY CORNER
'GOVERNMENT' BY CARL SANDBURG:


The sun is sinking in the west, and the Muse is afoot for yet another enchanted nocturnal visit. And whose door should she decide to knock upon than Molly's, the veritable inner sanctum of all that is cultural. You guessed it. Another episode of Molly's Poetry Corner. Cheer up. It's better than most of the trash on the idiot box, and maybe a little "genteeelity" will rub off on you.


Today's offering is 'Government' by American poet Carl Sandburg (1878-1967). Ok, Ok, Sandburg was not an anarchist but was rather a lifelong socialist. Still, what follows below could easily have been penned by an anarchism inspired writer. Sandburg, after all, became a socialist in the early days of the 20th century when the contrast between anarchist socialism and the class rule of the managers (with or without grinding dictatorship) embodied in statist socialism had nothing of the almost 100 years of historical example that it has today.


Sandberg went on to live a long and productive life, winning no less than three Pulitzer prizes for his works. A good sample of his poetry can be accessed at the Carl Sandburg site. Here's one of his poems 'Government', first published in 1916 in the book 'Chicago Poems'.
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GOVERNMENT
THE Government--I heard about the Government and
I went out to find it. I said I would look closely at
it when I saw it.
Then I saw a policeman dragging a drunken man to
the callaboose. It was the Government in action.
I saw a ward alderman slip into an office one morning
and talk with a judge. Later in the day the judge
dismissed a case against a pickpocket who was a
live ward worker for the alderman. Again I saw
this was the Government, doing things.
I saw militiamen level their rifles at a crowd of
workingmen who were trying to get other workingmen
to stay away from a shop where there was a strike
on. Government in action.

Everywhere I saw that Government is a thing made of
men, that Government has blood and bones, it is
many mouths whispering into many ears, sending
telegrams, aiming rifles, writing orders, saying
"yes" and "no."

Government dies as the men who form it die and are laid
away in their graves and the new Government that
comes after is human, made of heartbeats of blood,
ambitions, lusts, and money running through it all,
money paid and money taken, and money covered
up and spoken of with hushed voices.
A Government is just as secret and mysterious and sensitive
as any human sinner carrying a load of germs,
traditions and corpuscles handed down from
fathers and mothers away back.
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Sandburg's incredible 300 page poem 'The People, Yes' (1936) is considered by some to be his masterpiece. Here's an excerpt.
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Excerpt From The People Yes

Carl Sandburg
--------------------
The people yes
The people will live on.
The learning and blundering people will live on.
They will be tricked and sold and again sold
And go back to the nourishing earth for rootholds,
The people so peculiar in renewal and comeback,
You can't laugh off their capacity to take it.
The mammoth rests between his cyclonic dramas.

The people so often sleepy, weary, enigmatic,
is a vast huddle with many units saying:
"I earn my living.
I make enough to get by
and it takes all my time.
If I had more time
I could do more for myself
and maybe for others.
I could read and study
and talk things over
and find out about things.
It takes time.
I wish I had the time."

The people is a tragic and comic two-face: hero and hoodlum:
phantom and gorilla twisting to moan with a gargoyle mouth:
"They buy me and sell me...it's a game...sometime I'll
break loose..."

Once having marched
Over the margins of animal necessity,
Over the grim line of sheer subsistence
Then man came
To the deeper rituals of his bones,
To the lights lighter than any bones,
To the time for thinking things over,
To the dance, the song, the story,
Or the hours given over to dreaming,
Once having so marched.

Between the finite limitations of the five senses
and the endless yearnings of man for the beyond
the people hold to the humdrum bidding of work and food
while reaching out when it comes their way
for lights beyond the prison of the five senses,
for keepsakes lasting beyond any hunger or death.
This reaching is alive.
The panderers and liars have violated and smutted it.
Yet this reaching is alive yet
for lights and keepsakes.

The people know the salt of the sea
and the strength of the winds
lashing the corners of the earth.
The people take the earth
as a tomb of rest and a cradle of hope.
Who else speaks for the Family of Man?
They are in tune and step
with constellations of universal law.
The people is a polychrome,
a spectrum and a prism
held in a moving monolith,
a console organ of changing themes,
a clavilux of color poems
wherein the sea offers fog
and the fog moves off in rain
and the labrador sunset shortens
to a nocturne of clear stars
serene over the shot spray
of northern lights.

The steel mill sky is alive.
The fire breaks white and zigzag
shot on a gun-metal gloaming.
Man is a long time coming.
Man will yet win.
Brother may yet line up with brother:

This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.
There are men who can't be bought.
The fireborn are at home in fire.
The stars make no noise,
You can't hinder the wind from blowing.
Time is a great teacher.
Who can live without hope?

In the darkness with a great bundle of grief
the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for keeps, the people
march:
"Where to? what next?"
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In addition to the official Carl Sandburg site mentioned above there are a couple of other sites where you can read Sandburg's poetry. One is the Black Cat Poems site, and the other is the Poem Hunter site. Here from the later site is a poem similar to the above but written much earlier.
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I AM THE PEOPLE, THE MOB
I AM the people--the mob--the crowd--the mass.
Do you know that all the great work of the world is
done through me?
I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the
world's food and clothes.
I am the audience that witnesses history. The Napoleons
come from me and the Lincolns. They die. And
then I send forth more Napoleons and Lincolns.
I am the seed ground. I am a prairie that will stand
for much plowing. Terrible storms pass over me.
I forget. The best of me is sucked out and wasted.
I forget. Everything but Death comes to me and
makes me work and give up what I have. And I
forget.
Sometimes I growl, shake myself and spatter a few red
drops for history to remember. Then--I forget.
When I, the People, learn to remember, when I, the
People, use the lessons of yesterday and no longer
forget who robbed me last year, who played me for
a fool--then there will be no speaker in all the world
say the name: "The People," with any fleck of a
sneer in his voice or any far-off smile of derision.
The mob--the crowd--the mass--will arrive then.