Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Upton Sinclair, ed. (1878–1968). rn The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest. 1915.

Breshkovskaya

Elsa Barker

(Contemporary American poet and novelist. Catherine Breshkovsky, called “Little Mother” by the Russian peasants, was sentenced to a long term of exile in Siberia when seventy-seven years of age)

HOW narrow seems the round of ladies’ lives

And ladies’ duties in their smiling world,

The day this Titan woman, gray with years,

Goes out across the void to prove her soul!

Brief are the pains of motherhood that end

In motherhood’s long joy; but she has borne

The age-long travail of a cause that lies

Still-born at last on History’s cold lap.

And yet she rests not; yet she will not drink

The cup of peace held to her parching lips

By smug Dishonor’s hand. Nay, forth she fares,

Old and alone, on exile’s rocky road—

That well-worn road with snows incarnadined

By blood-drops from her feet long years agone.

Mother of power, my soul goes out to you

As a strong swimmer goes to meet the sea

Upon whose vastness he is like a leaf.

What are the ends and purposes of song,

Save as a bugle at the lips of Life

To sound reveille to a drowsing world

When some great deed is rising like the sun?

Where are those others whom your deeds inspired

To deeds and words that were themselves a deed?

Those who believe in death have gone with death

To the gray crags of immortality;

Those who believed in life have gone with life

To the red halls of spiritual death.

And you? But what is death or life to you?

Only a weapon in the hand of faith

To cleave a way for beings yet unborn

To a far freedom you will never share!

Freedom of body is an empty shell

Wherein men crawl whose souls are held with gyves;

For Freedom is a spirit, and she dwells

As often in a jail as on the hills.

In all the world this day there is no soul

Freer than you, Breshkovsky, as you stand

Facing the future in your narrow cell.

For you are free of self and free of fear,

Those twin-born shades that lie in wait for man

When he steps out upon the wind-blown road

That leads to human greatness and to pain.

Take in your hand once more the pilgrim’s staff—

Your delicate hand misshapen from the nights

In Kara’s mines; bind on your unbent back

That long has borne the burdens of the race,

The exile’s bundle, and upon your feet

Strap the worn sandals of a tireless faith.

You are too great for pity. After you

We send not sobs, but songs; and all our days

We shall walk bravelier knowing where you are.