(February 12 February 15, 1934)
They shot the Socialists at half-past five
In the name of victorious Austria.
The sky
Was blue with February those four cold days
And the little snow lay lightly on the hard ground.
(Vienna's the laughing city of tunes and wine,
Of Schlagobers and starved children . . . and a great ghost . . .)
They had called the general strike but the plans went wrong
Though the lights failed, that first night.
It is odd to turn
The switch by your bed and have no lamp go on
And then look out of the windows at the black street
Empty, except for a man with a pistol, running.
We have built our cities for lights and the harsh glare
And, when the siren screams at the winter stars,
It is only a fire, an ambulance, nothing wrong,
Just part of the day. You can walk to the corner store
And never duck at a bullet. The lights are there
And, if you see a man with a pistol, running,
You phone the police or wait for tomorrow's papers.
It is different, with the lights out and the shots beginning. . , .
These were ordinary people.
The kind that go to the movies and watch parades,
Have children, take them to parks, ride in trolley cars,
The workmen at the next bench, the old, skilful foreman;
You have seen the backs of their necks a million times
In any crowd and forgottenseen their faces,
Anonymous, tired, good-humored, faces of skill.
(The quick hands moving deftly among machines,
Hands of the baker and the baker's wife,
Hands gloved with rubber, mending the spitting wire,
Hands on controls and levers, big, square-palmed hands
With the dint of the tool upon them,
Dull, clumsy fingers laboring a dull task
And others, writing and thoughtful, or sensitive
As a setter's mouth.) You have seen their hats and their shoes
Everywhere, in every city. They wear no costumes.
Their pockets have lint in them, and tobacco-dust.
Their races are the faces of any crowd.
It was Monday when this began.
They were slow to start it
But they had been pushed to the wall. They believed in peace,
Good houses, meetings, elections and resolutions,
Not the sudden killing in corners, the armored cars
Sweeping the square, the bombs and the bloody heads,
But they'd seen what happened next door, in another country,
To people who believed in peace and elections
And the same tide was rising here. They could hear the storm.
They took to their guns at last, in the workmen's quarters,
Where they'd built the houses for peace and the sure future.
The houses were tall and fine,
Great blocks of manstone, built by people for people,
Not to make one man rich. When you do not build
To make one man rich, you can give people light and air,
You can have room to turn round room after the day
You can have books and clean water and healthy sleep,
A place for children to grow in.
All over the world men knew about those houses.
Let us remember Karl Marx Hof, Goethe Hof,
The one called Matteoti and all the rest.
They were little cities built by people for people.
They were shelled by six-inch guns.
It is strange to go
Up the known stairs to the familiar room
And point the lean machine-gun out of the window,
Strange to see the black of that powder upon your hands. . . .
They had hidden arms against need but they could not find them
In many cases, being ordinary people.
The other side was much readierFey and Dollfuss
And all the shirts were quite ready.
When you believe
In parks and elections and meetings and not in death,
Not in Caesar,
It is hard to realize that the day may come
When you send your wife and children down to the cellar
To be out of the way of shells, and mount the known
Countable stairs to the familiar room,
The unfamiliar pistol cold in your fist
And your mouth dry with despair.
It is hard to think
In spite of all oppression, all enmity,
That that is going to happen.
And so, when it does happen, your plans go wrong.
(White flags on the Karl Marx Hof and the Goethe Hof
And the executions, later.)
A correspondent
Of the British press remarked, when the thing was done
And they let him in to see it, that on the whole
The buildings were less damaged than you'd expect
From four days' bullets. True, he had seen, before,
A truckload of undertakers and cheap, pine coffins
So to the disputed district.
But the buildings stood, on the whole. They had built them well.
These were ordinary people and they are dead.
Dead where they lived, by violence, in their own homes,
Between the desk and the door and the kitchen chair,
Dead in the courtyards where the children played
(The child's jaw smashed by a bullet, the bloody crib,
The woman sprawled like a rag on the clean stairs)
Unncaesarlike, unwarlike, merely dead.
Dead, or in exile many, or afraid
(And those who live there still and wake in the night,
Remembering the free city)
Silent or hunted and their leaders slimed.
The communists said they would not fight but they fought
Four days of bitter February,
Ill-led, outnumbered, the radio blaring lies
And the six-inch guns against them and all hope gone,
Four days in the Karl Marx Hof and the Goethe Hof
And nobody knows yet how many dead
And sensible men give in and accept the flag,
The badge, the arm-band, the gag, the slave-tyranny,
The shining, tin peace of Caesar.
They were not sensible,
Four days of February, two years ago.
Bring no flowers here,
Neither of mountain nor valley,
Nor even the common flowers of the waste field
That still are free to the poor;
No wreaths upon these graves, these houseless graves;
But bring alone the powder-blackened brass
Of the shell-case, the slag of bullets, the ripped steel
And the bone-spattering lead,
Infertile, smelling acridly of death,
And heap them here, till the rusting of guns, for remembrance.
