The Hay-market Massacre, 1886

The Hay-market Massacre, 1886

"The day will come when our silence

will be more powerful than the voices

you are throttling today."

                           — August Spies.......................................................................................

            “The scaffold awaited them. They were five, but Lingg got up early for death, exploding a dynamite

            cap between his teeth. Fischer was seen unhurriedly humming the ‘Marseillaise.’ Parsons, the

            agitator who used the word like a whip or a knife, grasps the hands of his comrades before the

            guards tie his own behind his back. Engel, famous for his sharp wit, asks for port wine & then

            makes them all laugh with a joke. Spies, who so often wrote about anarchism as the entrance into

            life, prepares himself in silence to enter into death.

            “The spectators in the orchestra of the theater fix their view on the scaffold — a sign, a noise, the

            trap door gives way, now they die, in a horrible dance, twisting in the air. [Here he quotes Martí.]

            “José Martí wrote the story of the execution of the anarchists in Chicago. The working class of the

            world will bring them back to life every first of May. That was still unknown, but Martí always writes

            as if he is listening for the cry of a newborn where it is least expected.”

            "A time will come, when from our coffins

            "Will rise a powerful voice,

            "Stronger than that which you want now to choke,

            "A thousand times stronger, more striking!"

            These were the last words of Spies...

            Hangmen, what do you gain from this?

            Did you annihilate the spiritual giant?

            Did you extinguish the sun?

             "August Spies," by David Edelshtat (Oct 10, 1890; translated

            from Yiddish by Ori Kiritz) from, Kiritz, Ori. The

            Poetics of Anarchy: David Edelshtat's Revolutionary Poetry.

            (Frankfurt: Lang, Europaischer Verlag der Wissenschaften, 1997.)...................................