Hibiscus And Salvia Flowers

_Hark! Hark! The dogs do bark! It's the socialists come to town, None in rags and none in tags, Swaggering up and down_. Sunday morning, And from the Sicilian townlets skirting Etna The socialists have gathered upon us, to look at us. How shall we know them when we see them? How shall we know them now they've come? Not by their rags and not by their tags, Nor by any distinctive gown; The same unremarkable Sunday suit And hats cocked up and down. Yet there they are, youths, loutishly Strolling in gangs and staring along the Corso With the gang-stare And a half-threatening envy At every _foresti?re_, Every lordly tuppenny foreigner from the hotels, fattening on the exchange. _Hark! Hark! The dogs do bark! It's the socialists in the town_. Sans rags, sans tags, Sans beards, sans bags, Sans any distinction at all except loutish commonness. How do we know then, that they are they? Bolshevists. Leninists. Communists. Socialists. -Ists! -Ists! Alas, salvia and hibiscus flowers. Salvia and hibiscus flowers. Listen again. Salvia and hibiscus flowers. Is it not so? Salvia and hibiscus flowers. _Hark! Hark! The dogs do hark_! Salvia and hibiscus flowers. Who smeared their doors with blood? Who on their breasts Put salvias and hibiscus? Rosy, rosy scarlet, And flame-rage, golden-throated Bloom along the Corso on the living, perambulating bush. Who said they might assume these blossoms? What god did they consult? Rose-red, princess hibiscus, rolling her pointed Chinese petals! Azalea and camellia, single peony And pomegranate bloom and scarlet mallow-flower And all the eastern, exquisite royal plants That noble blood has brought us down the ages! Gently nurtured, frail and splendid Hibiscus flower- Alas, the Sunday coats of Sicilian bolshevists! Pure blood, and noble blood, in the fine and rose-red veins; Small, interspersed with jewels of white gold Frail-filigreed among the rest; Rose of the oldest races of princesses, Polynesian Hibiscus. Eve, in her happy moments, Put hibiscus in her hair, Before she humbled herself, and knocked her knees with repentance. Sicilian bolshevists, With hibiscus flowers in the buttonholes of your Sunday suits, Come now, speaking of rights, what right have you to this flower? The exquisite and ageless aristocracy Of a peerless soul, Blessed are the pure in heart and the fathomless in bright pride; The loveliness that knows _noblesse oblige_; The native royalty of red hibiscus flowers; The exquisite assertion of new delicate life Risen from the roots: Is this how you'll have it, red-decked socialists, Hibiscus-breasted? If it be so, I fly to join you, And if it be not so, brutes to pull down hibiscus flowers! Or salvia! Or dragon-mouthed salvia with gold throat of wrath! Flame-flushed, enraged, splendid salvia, Cock-crested, crowing your orange scarlet like a tocsin Along the Corso all this Sunday morning. Is your wrath red as salvias. You socialists? You with your grudging, envious, furtive rage, In Sunday suits and yellow boots along the Corso. You look well with your salvia flowers, I must say. Warrior-like, dawn-cock's-comb flaring flower Shouting forth flame to set the world on fire, The dust-heap of man's filthy world on fire, And burn it down, the glutted, stuffy world, And feed the young new fields of life with ash, With ash I say, Bolshevists, Your ashes even, my friends, Among much other ash. If there were salvia-savage bolshevists To burn the world back to manure-good ash. Wouldn't I stick the salvia in my coat! But these themselves must burn, these louts! The dragon-faced, The anger-reddened, golden-throated salvia With its long antennae of rage put out Upon the frightened air. Ugh, how I love its fangs of perfect rage That gnash the air; The molten gold of its intolerable rage Hot in the throat. I long to be a bolshevist And set the stinking rubbish-heap of this foul world Afire at a myriad scarlet points, A bolshevist, a salvia-face To lick the world with flame that licks it clean. I long to see its chock-full crowdedness And glutted squirming populousness on fire Like a field of filthy weeds Burnt back to ash, And then to see the new, real souls sprout up. Not this vast rotting cabbage patch we call the world; But from the ash-scarred fallow New wild souls. Nettles, and a rose sprout, Hibiscus, and mere grass, Salvia still in a rage And almond honey-still, And fig-wort stinking for the carrion wasp; All the lot of them, and let them fight it out. But not a trace of foul equality, Nor sound of still more foul human perfection. You need not clear the world like a cabbage patch for me; Leave me my nettles, Let me fight the wicked, obstreperous weeds myself, and put them in their place, Severely in their place. I don't at all want to annihilate them, I like a row with them. But I won't be put on a cabbage-idealistic level of equality with them. What rot, to see the cabbage and hibiscus-tree As equals! What rot, to say the louts along the Corso In Sunday suits and yellow shoes Are my equals! I am their superior, saluting the hibiscus flower, not them. The same I say to the profiteers from the hotels, the money- fat-ones, Profiteers here being called dog-fish, stinking dog-fish, sharks. The same I say to the pale and elegant persons. Pale-face authorities loitering tepidly: _That I salute the red hibiscus flowers And send mankind to its inferior blazes_. Mankind's inferior blazes, And these along with it, all the inferior lot- These bolshevists, These dog-fish, These precious and ideal ones, All rubbish ready for fire. And I salute hibiscus and the salvia flower Upon the breasts of loutish bolshevists, Damned loutish bolshevists, Who perhaps will do the business after all, In the long run, in spite of themselves. Meanwhile, alas For me no fellow-men, No salvia-frenzied comrades, antennae Of yellow-red, outreaching, living wrath Upon the smouldering air, And throat of brimstone-molten angry gold. Red, angry men are a race extinct, alas! Never To be a bolshevist With a hibiscus flower behind my ear In sign of life, of lovely, dangerous life And passionate disquality of men; In sign of dauntless, silent violets, And impudent nettles grabbing the under-earth, And cabbages born to be cut and eat, And salvia fierce to crow and shout for fight, And rosy-red hibiscus wincingly Unfolding all her coiled and lovely self In a doubtful world. Never, bolshevistically To be able to stand for all these! Alas, alas, I have got to leave it all To the youths in Sunday suits and yellow shoes Who have pulled down the salvia flowers And rosy delicate hibiscus flowers And everything else to their disgusting level, Never, of course, to put anything up again. But yet If they pull all the world down, The process will amount to the same in the end. Instead of flame and flame-clean ash Slow watery rotting back to level muck And final humus. Whence the re-start. And still I cannot bear it That they take hibiscus and the salvia flower.