Though the air is foetid, 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

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

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.

--Kenneth Rexroth, "From the Paris Commune to the Kronstadt Rebellion" (1936)