FINDING WALDHEIM

  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