FINDING WALDHEIM


"The day will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you are throttling today." Finding Waldheim was easier             than finding Emma Goldman    silenced at last, or the Haymarket martyrs                      imprisoned beneath blocks of stone,         finding Waldheim was easier than              hearing the heart of the American left                   no longer beating in this corner          plot, across from a chapel they would have                         hated, anarchists and communists                                 together, Gurley Flynn, "the Rebel        Girl," so quiet now her "Bread & Roses"                        days all done, Eugene Dennis no HUAC                              subpoenas to splinter             his sleep, commitments                         measured in lifetimes, fighters                               for a better world, organizers       struggling down to the last                             epitaph in the One Big                  Cemetery, and me                             standing there, lost                                                  in history, clubbed                                          by death, gasping                                                   for hope, in the                                   stillness of a morning                                                         visit to Waldheim. Waldheim Cemetery Forest Lake, Illinois August 2004

All written material © Bill Schechter, 2016
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