The rain eases as I sit and smoke, unhurried. It is warm, the breeze stilled. The ground is spongy outside this gazebo. Water collects in depressions, forming pools… I have tracked muddy footprints to the bench where I sit.  The birds that share this shelter do not mind.

I should add that Hard Cash was a clandestine revolutionary journal of the late 1800′s produced by Arthur Desmond -aka Ragnar Redbeard. It caused quite a ruckus with the authorities in Sydney, Australia. It was outlawed, resulting in several prosecutions, but failing to silence its author. He later set sail for Chicago, where he continued to promote his revolutionary ideas in the form of Might is Right and the unofficial sequel: Rival Caesars.

The mightiest weapon of war and time,

For battling down the lords of crime,

Is fire

Fire

Victorious fire

It shatters armies

With its flashes

Whelming empires

In thunder crashes.

By fire perished Babylon

Nineveh, Thebes and Rome,

Fire burnt down Jerusalem

And flamed Diana’s dome

The glow of blazing Carthage

Lit up the Punic foam,

And fire swept Troy and Sodom

To their everlasting home.

Manifest destiny!

- Must is must -

Ashes to ashes -

Dust to dust.

Trembling, flickering, leaping higher -

- Blood and iron – days of ire -

Wrathful, vengeful, higher, higher:

Beauteous, sun-born, cleansing fire.

Balshazzar’s hall it made his tomb,

It flung Napoleon to his doom.

Verily, verily, verily!

The days of the Judgement is nigh -

O! Goddess of Liberty hearken!

You are holding your torch too high!

Lower it!

Lower it!

Lower it!

Lower it before I die.

Temples to ashes,

Debt to dust -

Fire consumeth

Things accursed.

CATILINE

London, 1899