Red flag waving over Spartacus,
Red cloth stripped from a gladiator’s loins
To flutter in the milk-warm wind along the roads of Capua,
Red flag shaken like a bloody hand in the face of kings…
Red clout stuck on a spike —
There flaunting gay as a red rose pinned
On a beggar’s cap in London Town —
Or clenched in a maimed hand…
A red and white rose smashed together…
Red shoots mauled and trodden yet ever sprouting anew
Till the lopped staff blooms again…
Red flower of the barricades —
First over the scarp and last left lying
    like spat-up blood upon the snow,
When ice-fangs bristle in the cooled-off guns
An dawn creeps in between the forepaws of the silence
    that crouches above the dead…

Red light burning down the centuries…
Red fire dwindling to a spark but never out…
Gleaming a moment on Bunker Hill…sinking,
    a blown-out flame,
    leaving a deeper greyness…
Red Flag over the dome of Moscow…
There gleaming like a youth’s shed blood on gold
Red flag kerchief of the sun—
Over devastation I salute you.