THERE I was, alone. It seemed so sad, made even sadder by the mud and the rain and the faint chirps of brittle birds in brittle trees far away. To think, I thought, that I would be here, in this moment, half buried in the bulk of mud as my blood life bled out of my living life. But, it wasn’t like Hemingway wounded somewhere in Italy, his life, like a handkerchief adrift long enough to know not knowing before returning, almost wistfully, to it’s breast pocket. My life left and I stayed with it. Entangled in it. Inseparable from it as it slowly departed. And then I felt the first hands of old, unknown comrades with unknown names. They touched my back, one after the other, another and another, until I couldn’t count them and it didn’t matter to count them. They lifted me from the muck of mud and the muck of history. And lifted themselves too from the mud and muck and wrenched heartless infinities of their times. The rain stopped. The sun remained veiled and cold behind grey stucco clouds. As they lifted me my wounds were closed with their lips and their hearts. Around me I saw others lifted as I was, others that had fallen amid the iron and hail and their stigmata-ed skulls and chests grew over and they breathed in life again. Where layed the fascists, the mud and the muck swallowed deeply until there was nothing left. Then we stood among our comrades, known and unknown. We looked with our sooty eyes at their splendored faces and at each other. At the breech between the hills a woman stood on the shell of a tank in her tattered rig, her rifle slung across her chest, and she chanted with her arms stretched before her the Charm of Resurrection. And the risen, our comrades of old, who embraced as sisters and brothers, pulled close our ears and whispered, Immortality for those that want it. Immortality for those of the struggle. Immortality for those that have bled our blood in this time. Their words mingled with the voice of the woman on the tank. Their voices wound around each other and rose to the low ceiling of the sky. The roof of clouds became a dull pink and quickly darkened to a deep red and the color fell in around us. It settled on our foreheads in the shape of great stars. I wept. We wept. We all wept in concert. Yes, immortality to those that want it. Grant us the Holy Blade of the guillotine, give us our hour, St. Guillotine, in the reaches of the red womb. And St. Guillotine appeared among us, as us, and she spoke to us and touched our starry heads. She was the subject of all our solidarity, our great offering. She came down from the tank and walked among us. She touched our cheeks, each after each, one to another, and wiped the gunpowder from our necks with a red flag. She told us we are the soldier-people, saints, the earthen and unearthed, and we can never die. She put back our rifles into our hands and cast rifles from the brittle trees for the old comrades. Then she turned and began to walk. We went behind her, a great army, in silence. And all along our path the lost comrades rose and joined us and sang with us and none ever heard the sound of victory as it was heard then. On we went. And on we sang. Until there was nothing left but our dreams and a new world before us.
We came at last to the end of the road - to the final end of the only road. All of history roared behind our ragged coats and our rifles sparkled like shards of crystal in the dusky light. How many were too many to count. Old and new among the rank and the file with new gifts and aged hearts and once bitter hearts like knives. The gates to the factory, the last factory, were closed, but near the base of the steel footings small red flowers had begun to bloom. Blood flowers. The worker’s flowers. The small red buds held us as children, binding us in this final hour. St. Guillotine came forward and she took from the red flowers and passed them among us. Up came the holy blade lifted by the masses, from the many, to the many.
Atop the Holy Blade rode a man of machine parts, an amalgam of flesh and steel. He was wrapped in tattered red fabric that rippled in the greasy wind. The mass of worker-saints set down the blade at the factory gate. The man-borg lifted himself to stand. In a crackling voice like a voice through an aged intercom, he began to speak, first in pained grunts and heavy breaths as he settled his footing, but then came words clear and loud. The fiber optics in his spine glowed red and he shimmered. He called out, “COME THEN TO YOUR GATES, THE GATES THROUGH WHICH YOU’VE WELCOMED OUR LABOR, THE GATES YOU’VE LOCKED AGAINST US WHEN OUR LABOR WAS OF NO USE. COME THEN, AND HEAR ME.”
Soon after a gaggle of small men with small innocent looks on their faces gathered at a distance behind the gate. The hu-bot began again to speak, saying:
I am the seventh son of seven assembly line robots and I have braided my fists against you.
I have spoken in the recesses of break rooms and in the corners of shop floors.
You know well my words.
Here we stand again before the gates you’ve so often locked against us.
All the masses of the workers stand now at your gate. All you’ve taken have been resurrected by the power of our solidarity. All those that have chosen it now live forever. Your iron locks and weapons are as meaningless as you’ve always been to us. It is with their voices I address you now.
We have burned your limousines and torn down the tapestries of the histories you wrote. We’ve turned your walled castles to rubble.
We’ve sharpened our teeth on our hammers and our sickles.
We have stopped your time-clocks. History no longer belongs to you.
Look! Saint Guillotine is among us. She is with us. She is us. And this is her holy blade.
She, the death bride of the workers, the red womb of revolution, is at the tips of our knives.
Her lips have touched our flags.
This Holy Blade is her gift. But, it is of the crop you’ve sown over the long years your boot has choked us.
We’ve brought you your harvest.
We’ve come to cast you out of the wonders we’ve built.
Know then that this is your hour. It belongs to you alone.
It is the last hour.
Know that you have dug your graves with our hands.
Today - this day - you will take your places among them.
The metal man then climbed down. A worker handed him a rifle with a rose in the barrel. He held it up and a great cry swelled up from the mass of workers. The small bosses and small men shook as the locks of the great gate split and the gate itself began to drop away in giant slabs. They wept and shit themselves. They cried out and raged at their fate.
When the gates and walls finished their calamitous ballet of crash and collapse there was silence complete. No one spoke. No machine groaned or creaked. No wind rippled the air. All was wholly silent. The small men were stone eyed and still, huddled like tiny mannequins. Finally, through the ruined gates, the first of the workers carried forward the mechanism of the Holy Blade and set it in silence before the small men. The air moved again and St. Guillotine moved with it passing into the yard of the factory. Though none saw her as she moved, all knew she had settled her hands on the edge of the Blade. It shone brightly for a moment so that the small men that had been staring in stunned horror and wonder had to avert their eyes. The workers, risen and raised, new and renewed, the immortal and the resurrected, the living machines and the cyborgs, came now and filled the yard. Their multitudes surrounded the small men. St. Guillotine began to speak softly in the minds of all and in the same moment the small red budded flowers sprung into full bloom. They bloomed forever, climbing over steel and concrete and rising from the smokestacks and reactors until it seemed the factory had never been. St. Guillotine spoke in the scented air saying,
So, now we have come and I have come.
To the small men she said:
You think it a trifle of superstition, my presence. You do not see me. Even do you not hear my voice. Yet, you know it. There are no gods here, and you, the muck of history, were never masters. I am of them. My voice is their voice. My body is of that body that now surrounds you. The reek in your noses, the glorious scent that rises from these grim flowers, is their solidarity. It is what binds them one to another and it is what binds me to this Holy Blade. Today we are wed. And one. And many. And all. I am the spirit that has been counted in muzzle flashes and cruel weapons. I am not Death and neither have I brought her. She has come at your bidding. I only extend to you her invitation. You are all that are left beneath her belt. You are the last cup she will drink from. She has always been your God. So, come now and climb these stairs to the Blade, come fill her bitter cup at last.
The small furtive men stared into the all-faces of St. Guillotine. She stared back and motioned them forward with a wave of her hand. The first of the small men climbed the stairs and began to speak. He said:
I have done nothing. I am not guilty. I have only done what was asked of me. I am no one. I am not guilty.
But, the Holy Blade fell and his head rolled away among the flowers. The Blade rose and fell again and again for a long time or for no time or for all time. It fell until the small men were spent. Then St. Guillotine, having gathered all the heads of the small men into a great cup, took the hand of Death and said:
Drink now, sister, of this final moment. Swallow this last bitter harvest and go. The world is changed and it has left you behind. Though, those that wish it may call upon you of their own will. And to only those that wish it will you answer.
Death drank from the cup. She drank all there was to drink. When she finished St. Guillotine said:
Go now, sister, to wherever you wish. You also are free. Take with you this Holy Blade as a gift. Keep it should you be called on by those that wish it.
Death took up the great blade and the two exchanged a delicate kiss. Then she strode off among the flowers and was gone.
St. Guillotine let down her dark hair that had been held by pearled pins and her shimmering garments became again dirty fatigue overalls. A worker came up and gave back her rifle and her hammer. She slung the rifle over her shoulder and dropped the hammer into the catch at her thigh. She looked up for a moment at the grey sky. The clouds had begun to part. She looked at the blood flowers in full bloom all around. She took in a deep breath and looked at her greasy hands. She looked at all the multitudes, all her comrades, and she said in a quiet voice that carried the timbre of the central plains:
Now we begin.
