Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

A Hymn for the Lynchers

Isidor Schneider

O BURNING fire,

Streaking the midnight,

Parching the silence.

O the flames that are arrows,

Shaken in a golden quiver,

The flames….

O the flames that are sudden ripples

In an imprisoned river,

The flames….

O the flames that are screaming children

Danced in a slippery lap …

The flames….

O the wide-striding shadow of the flames,

The dark and stately smoke

That needs heaven

For a floor to die upon.

O burning Fire,

Tearing the face of the midnight,

Hissing into the ear of silence.

O red mouth

And yellow teeth

Of Fire.

I have seen you eat up trees and houses,

And fatten

Till your obese shadow covered the sky.

But men are your delicacy,

Men whose flesh is flavored with the blood of God.

You eat them with a hungry joy,

With flames flung upward,

As though with arrows

To spit the souls.

How you pant,

When you steal into a house,

And search

For a man.

We can yell louder than you—

Our shriek is leaner and longer.

We call for the touch of you to prickle our flesh,

Like insidious lewd fingers.

When the night grows over the houses

With broad black leaves,

When silence shuts,

And sounds are like grits

In a shell,

We come to you.

O snarling Fire!

Oh, curse, grovelling on the ground,

Where the sky hurls you!

Oh, we stand close around—

You, you are the god whose touch is death,

Who piteously asks for deaths.

Oh! oh! to embrace you—

To become Fire!

Always him whom we destroy

Death makes a god.

Our faces gleam—

We are cheeks of wet coral,

And our sweat is as hard as diamonds.

Our shouts spurt,

And our smiles

Are like nooses, that have caught our joy.

And we watch your feast,

O red mouth

With yellow teeth….

The skin puckers up from the flesh—

How your breath grows heavy!

The blood drops into your tongue.

The hiss is a snap of teeth—

Pain beats like a heart.

Pain is the heart,

And the blood of pain flows swiftly …

Swiftly….

O Fire, grow dark!

Call the shadows to pick your teeth—

Lie back and rest!

Your shadow in the distance grows numb.

We are exhausted with too much joy.

The keenness of our pleasure has grown dull.

We are like lovers,

Nodding at last within the marriage bed,

Our drained eyes seeking the swelling breast of the night.

Heal for us the darkness and the silence.

Now we can talk of our pleasures—

Talk is like licking the lips….

Better than goading animals

Into crouched fear

Or strangled pain,

Better than beating with sticks,

Or prodding where pain breaks quickly,

Better than tearing at girl’s flesh,

And letting the fingers suck

At the bleeding maidenhood,

Better than all the terrible lusts!—

O green laughter of Herodias,

O leper-white feet of Astarte,

O self-embracing totem-poles!—

Better than all the terrible lusts

Is to give a man

To fire.