May Day
Published: New Masses, May 2, 1939;
HTML: for marxists.org in March, 2002
August Spies: You may strangle this voice, but there will be a time when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today.
Albert Parsons: O men of America, let the voice of the people be heard!
Still bright, and searing ignorance and fear,
This stronger beacon that you tended burns
And on this day of each advancing year
The memory of that first May First
returns.
But now the widespread fingers strengthen,
grow
More lithe, and flexing at the wrist--
O fingers forming to the fist!
Now is the imminence of commmonweal--
The turgid lambency of molten iron
Hardening in even lines of steel.