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Selected Works of Voltairine de Cleyre

Chapter 29: GERMINAL
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About This Book

The collection assembles poems, essays, sketches, and short stories that articulate a sustained critique of authority and social injustice while championing individual liberty and free thought. Poetic pieces alternate between personal meditation, memorial verse, and social protest; essays examine anarchist ideas, direct action, literary criticism, education, gender and labor issues, and responses to contemporary events and figures; sketches and stories dramatize moral dilemmas and the struggles of ordinary lives. An introductory biographical sketch and editorial notes place the selections in context and underscore the author's evolving political convictions and commitment to emancipatory reform.

Chapter IV.

"What was it blew? Ah whew, ah whew!"
Three green chipmunks have all turned blue!
The elephant smiles a peaceful smile,
And lifts off a tree-trunk sans haste or guile.
"Seize him, seize him! He's stealing our tree!
We're undone, undone," shriek the chipmunks three.
The elephant calmly upraised his trunk,
And said, "Did I hear a green chipmunk?"

"Ah chee, ah chee, ah chee, ah choo!"
"Chippy, you're blue!" "So're you!" "So're you!"

Philadelphia, December, 1895.

GERMINAL

(The last word of Angiolillo.)

Germinal!—The Field of Mars is plowing,
And hard the steel that cuts, and hot the breath
Of the great Oxen, straining flanks and bowing
Beneath his goad, who guides the share of Death.
Germinal!—The Dragon's teeth are sowing,
And stern and white the sower flings the seed
He shall not gather, though full swift the growing;
Straight down Death's furrow treads, and does not heed.
Germinal!—The Helmet Heads are springing
Far up the Field of Mars in gleaming files;
With wild war notes the bursting earth is ringing.

Within his grave the sower sleeps, and smiles.

London, October, 1897.