Poem: On the Anniversary of the Slucak Uprising
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Background information about the Slucak Uprising of 1920.
On the Anniversary of the Slucak Uprising
What is there then, of truth, in that fire-sharp moment,
When a world of picture-book peasants and gold girdles,
A folksong land, hidden among the marshes
Erupts in a bursting flower of pain and glory?
Afterwards, let historians wrangle motives,
Talk tactics, plot disastrous strategies -
(Divided troops, or over-weak supply-lines);
Afterwards, when new frontiers barb the land,
And they tint new maps new colours, we forget.
Afterwards, only a history-date of disaster,
A star half-lost in the victor's flaring sunrise.
But then, when the salt of blood makes wine of the air,
A leap of the heart, and all that is fire in the soul
Sings, shrill as a sword-flash in the frosty wind,
And all life is etched on the sky in a moment of blood;
Then, under the hem of death, life is a jewel,
A drop of diamond where all perception distils.
We cannot live so; already the rags of newsprint
Drift down the dusty wind, the blood-stained leaves
Wither beneath the snow, the frantic heart
Ceases its bruised tattoo of aching grief,
And we breathe stunned peace and the daily drone of living.
We live... they live... the defeated sleep at peace...
And the sedge-grass tangles across the lonely marshes...
Until, shrill across the years, the echoes wake
In the bitter cave behind the dark of the wind,
And a spark of light, white from the graves of Slucak,
Steels willow-fronds in the mist to glinting spears,
Finds heroes' blood caught in the sunset river.
[ 1958 © Vera Rich, 1999-2000 ]
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