The Destroyer

I am of the wind...
A wisp of the battering wind...

I trail my fingers along the Alps
And an avalanche falls in my wake...
I feel in my quivering length
When it buries the hamlet beneath...

I hurriedly sweep aside
The cities that clutter our path...
As we whirl about the circle of the globe...
As we tear at the pillars of the world...
Open to the wind,
The Destroyer!
The wind that is battering at your gates.

Lola Ridge

Lola Ridge, born Rose Emily Ridge, was an Irish-American anarchist poet and influential editor of avant-garde, feminist, and Marxist publications. Best known for her long poems and involvement in various social movements, Ridge's work addressed issues such as oppression and social justice. She published her first book of poems, "The Ghetto and Other Poems," in 1918, which gained her considerable acclaim. Ridge's poetry often focused on the lives of immigrants and the working class.

Lola Ridge

Bowery Afternoon

Lola Ridge, Simple Poetry

Altitude

Lola Ridge, Simple Poetry

To The American People

Lola Ridge, Simple Poetry

To Alexander Berkman

Lola Ridge, Simple Poetry

English

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Wind Rising In The Alleys

Wind rising in the alleys
My spirit lifts in you like a banner streaming free of hot walls.
You are full of unspent dreams....
You are laden with beginnings....
There is hope in you... not sweet... acrid as blood in the mouth.
Come into my tossing dust
Scattering the peace of old deaths,
Wind rising in the alleys,
Carrying stuff of flame.

Lola Ridge

North Wind

I love you, malcontent
Male wind -
Shaking the pollen from a flower
Or hurling the sea backward from the grinning sand.

Blow on and over my dreams...
Scatter my sick dreams...
Throw your lusty arms about me...
Envelop all my hot body...
Carry me to pine forests -
Great, rough-bearded forests...
Bring me to stark plains and steppes...
I would have the North to-night -
The cold, enduring North.

And if we should meet the Snow,
Whirling in spirals,
And he should blind my eyes...
Ally, you will defend me -
You will hold me close,
Blowing on my eyelids.

Lola Ridge

Dawn Wind

Wind, just arisen -
(Off what cool mattress of marsh-moss
In tented boughs leaf-drawn before the stars,
Or niche of cliff under the eagles?)
You of living things,
So gay and tender and full of play -
Why do you blow on my thoughts - like cut flowers
Gathered and laid to dry on this paper, rolled out of dead wood?

I see you
Shaking that flower at me with soft invitation
And frisking away,
Deliciously rumpling the grass...

So you fluttered the curtains about my cradle,
Prattling of fields
Before I had had my milk...
Did I stir on my pillow, making to follow you, Fleet One?
I - swaddled, unwinged, like a bird in the egg.

Let be
My dreams that crackle under your breath...
You have the dust of the world to blow on...
Do not tag...

Lola Ridge

Dispossessed

Tender and tremulous green of leaves
Turned up by the wind,
Twanging among the vines -
Wind in the grass
Blowing a clear path
For the new-stripped soul to pass...

The naked soul in the sunlight...
Like a wisp of smoke in the sunlight
On the hill-side shimmering.

Dance light on the wind, little soul,
Like a thistle-down floating
Over the butterflies
And the lumbering bees...

Come away from that tree
And its shadow grey as a stone...

Bathe in the pools of light
On the hillside shimmering -
Shining and wetted and warm in the sun-spray falling like golden rain -

But do not linger and look
At that bleak thing under the tree.

Lola Ridge

Flotsam

Crass rays streaming from the vestibules;
Cafes glittering like jeweled teeth;
High-flung signs
Blinking yellow phosphorescent eyes;
Girls in black
Circling monotonously
About the orange lights...

Nothing to guess at...
Save the darkness above
Crouching like a great cat.

In the dim-lit square,
Where dishevelled trees
Tustle with the wind - the wind like a scythe
Mowing their last leaves -
Arcs shimmering through a greenish haze -
Pale oval arcs
Like ailing virgins,
Each out of a halo circumscribed,
Pallidly staring...

Figures drift upon the benches
With no more rustle than a dropped leaf settling -
Slovenly figures like untied parcels,
And papers wrapped about their knees
Huddled one to the other,
Cring...

Lola Ridge

The Wind.

    The lithe wind races and sings
        Over the grasses and wheat -
    See the emerald floor as it springs
        To the touch of invisible feet!

    Ah, later, the fir and the pine
        Shall stoop to its weightier tread,
    As it tramps the thundering brine
        Till it shudders and whitens in dread!

    Breath of man! a glass of thine own
        Is the wind on the land, on the sea -
    Joy of life at thy touch! - full grown,
        Destruction and death maybe!

Theodore Harding Rand