The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1933-08-12
A Strange American Funeral
in BrQddOck
. BY MICHAEL GOLD

Listen to mournful drums strange funeral.
Listen to the story of strange American funeral
In the town of Braddock, Pennsylvania
seel-mis live ike foul dragons burning deyourng
and earth and sky,
It spring the spring wandered in frightened
child in the land of the steel ogreS,
And Clepak the great grnning Bohemian his
to work at six in the morning
buttons of bright the hills the river and
plum trees hung with wild white blossoms
half at his pudding trough tend
by the lake of birthstone,
The plum trees soften his heart
The green return and soften his heart
And he orge be hard steel and remembers only his
wifes breasts, his babys little daughters and the
sing when they drunk and happy,
He remembers and sheep and the grinning peasants
and the villages and fields of sunny Bohemia.
Listen to the mournful drums of a strange funeral.
Listen to the story of strange American funeral
Wake up, wake up! C1epak the furnaces
like tigers,
The flames fingng the high roof
mad, yellow tigers at their cage
Wake upl 1t is o'clock and the next batch Of mad
flowing steel to be poured into your pudding trough
Wake up wake upl for fawed lever is cracking in
of these fendsh caudrons
Wake up and wake up for the lever has cracked,
and the steel is raging and running down the floor
like escaped mailman
Wake up o, the dream is ended the steel
swallowed you forever Jan Clepak
Listen to the mournful drums Of a strange funeral
Listen to the story of strange American funeral.
Now three hard steel hold
flesh, nerves. the muscles brains and heart Of
Clepak
They hold memories of green grass and sheep the
puntrees the baby daughters, and the sunny Bohemian
villages.
And the directors Of the steelmi present great
of steel and man-memories to the widow of
Clepak,
And the great truck is borne to the great
In the graveyard
And Jan olepaks widow and friends carriage
behind the block of steel that holds Clepak.
soft man who killed by hard steel
Listen to the mournful Of a strange funeral
Listen to the story of a strange American funeral
Now three thinkers thinking strange thoughts in the
graveyard.
20 I'll get stay drunk forever I'll never marry
woman father laughing children.
I'll forget everything, I'll be nothing from now on
Life is dirty joke, like funera"
One Of the friends thinking in the weetSneng
AS derrick three tons of steel that held Jan
Clepak
LISTEN TO THE DRUMS OF THE STRANGE
AMERICAN FUNERALD
IN clothes, scrub floors I'll be fifty-csnt
whore, but my children will work in the steel
Clepaks wife thinking earth is hoved over the
great steel coffin
In the spring sunlight in the soft April air.
GIsTEN TO THE DRUMS OF THE STRANGE
AMERICAN FUNERALD
"11l make myself hard as steel harder
I'll day and make bullets body and
shoot them into tyrants heart
The other friend is thinking the listener
He who listened to the mournful the strange
funeral,
Who listened to the story of strange American unerl
And turned as mad fiendsh cauldron with cracked
1eve-.
LISTEN TO THE MoyRNFUL DRUMS OF
STRANGE FUNERAL
LISTEN TO THE STORY OF A STRANGE AMER
ICAN FUNERAL
From May Days" An Anthology of Nases-I.b ,rator