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Arch Anarachist Emma Goldman once declared Voltairine de Cleyre

“The most gifted and brilliant anarchist woman America ever produced …The American soil sometimes
does bring forth exquisite plants.”

Quite a complement. Voltairine's little known poem The Gods and the people, sings vengence and retribution against a corrupt elite cloaked in religion. I'm publishing here the final verse and you can read more about her here. It's a useful reminder that poetry can be an angry physical force, just when you think its gone all limp and botanical.

from THE GODS AND THE PEOPLE.
by Voltairine de Cleyre

The Sword that Damocles saw
By a hair swings over your head!
What ye have sown ye shall reap :
Teardrops, and Blood, and Hate,
Gaunt gather before your Seat
And knock at your palace gate!
"There are murderers on your thrones,
There are thieves in your Justice halls!
White Leprosy cancers their stones,
And gnaws at their worm-eaten walls!
"And the Hand of Belshazzar's Feast
Writes over, in flaming light,
'Thought's kingdom no more to the Priest;
Nor the law of Right to the Might.'