Sol Funaroff

’s "What The Thunder Said: A Fire Sermon" Essay, Research Paper


WHAT THE THUNDER SAID: A FIRE SERMON


Where are the roots that clutch, what branches grow


Out of this stony rubbish?–T. S. Eliot


A Cinematic Poem


The Communards, they are storming heaven!


A damp gust of March wind


swirls and scatters papers.


And the hot, critical July days!—


tense wireless bristling with flashes,


stammering, stuttering,


awaiting what code,


what code to translate


Capital, Famine, Predatory War,


into what dialectic odyssey


the machine gun’s riveting shall inscribe—


the Leatherjacket fatally indite?


In the Smolny:


the decisive delegates


drawn faces,


burnt cigarettes, telephones,


wires, leaflets,–


telegraphic congresses:


and in the chill streets


armed workers, soldiers,


add fuel to the street fires.


Rifles ready. Waiting. Deciding.


Who are the riders?


When the thunderheads hammer,


the palaces reverberate,


the napoleonic columns fall;


the cracked plaster of paris Narcissus


drowns in his fragments.


The Thorthunder speaks:


Workers! Soldiers! Sailors!


We are the riders of steel storms!


We are the fire-bearers!


Ours the heritage of the first flame-runner


racing up the steep dark slopes,


lightning in the night!


Created and creator of fire!


We are the riders of steel stallions—


we are the fire-bearers,


the kinetic synergy of factories


snorting flambent plumes,


charging,


rushing up the tracks beacon-eyed!


And scarlet ships of space


wing time’s fires


cataclysmic bear


earth’s heirs


the communists with battle shouts


rumble over the skyways,


scatter cannonades of stars,–


flowers of life and death,


flowers of revolution


rocket amid acrid clouds!


The Thorthunder says:


(rumblin crumblin)


Da!


Da Da!


All Power To The Soviets!


The Spring rain blows over the steppes.


In October


lightning ripples in the windwaved wheat—


great streak of silver whistling scythe!


And tractors bloom in the wheatfields!


They rumble,


they crumble the earth to their powerful wills.


They speak:


Gigant!


Overhead–


soft sunsetwinds blow rosegold odors


twilightly descend with their first young star.


Over the bridge strong hands on wheels and levers skim.


Over the bridge trains bead red stars


weld through fire and iron


five years!—


electric songs of speeding lights!


A blow torch simmers sparkles


and the Leatherjacket welds


stars over the waters below.


Red coals toss in torrents


in waterfalls of the Dnieprostroi,


and the Dnieper sows her banks with rubies.


There spring up socialized cities …


Workers of Magnitogorsk, with huge blast furnaces,


write in flame,


through fire and iron,


steel statements of steel deeds:


armored trains of revolution


dynamic steel drilling through black rock


dynamiting tunnels


mining blackgold ores!


Subways without christbeggars


whose blind eyes beseech a penance!


While the bursting sun flings from chaotic flame-pits


the synthesis of new worlds …


Far into the night, far into the ages,


the burning worlds whirl and shine …


… City towns … worker palaces of art and culture…


… Workers! We are at once the makers and the made!


Across transition belts of time and space,


tools in hand, we mould the human race,


we lay the base,


assemble and rivet bolts and parts


of marxist machinery,


and build mighty structures,


higher forms of social union…


… classless society … Gigant!


* * * *


Here are the blazing windows of iron mountains


in an electromagnetic sunset.


These are the heights men reach.


Still higher–


the Communard soars like a comet,


until the world is small tinder


for such a blaze of space!


Yes


the world is burning


and the stormwind’s big bellows fan the flames


and the hammer pounds stronger and stronger


and the anvil rings in answer


Thalatta! Thalatta!


and her all-conquering legions


shout and clash and clang their armor


and scarlet seas surge


exultant upon new shores


flowers of revolution red and gold bursting


the magniloquent red battlehorses of


plunging plumes in the thundering wind


paced with the lightning


… roar …


a song of flame


and the world in the embrace of the flaming flood


and the hammer heard clanging


clanging upon an anvil


clanging and shaping world october


and they march and demonstrate


and bright banners of faces cheer


thorthunderclapplause!


and they shout through the streets of the universe


yes


and the sun like an executed head falls


and the whole sky bleeds


dripping over church and skyscraper


and arms like hammers strike stars


forge new worlds shoot upwards


yes!


Note: The longer version of the poem is from Funaroff’s The


Spider and the Clock (1938). The shorter version, illustrated by Herbert Kruckman, is


from New Masses (1932)

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