MADRID

Put out the lights and stop the clocks.
Let time stand still.
Again man mocks himself
And all his human will to build and grow.
Madrid!
The fact and symbol of man's woe.
Madrid!
Time's end and throw-back,
Birth of darkness,
Years of light reduced:
The ever minus of the brute,
The nothingness of barren land
And stone and metal,
Emptyness of gold,
The dullness of a bill of sale:

Stupidity of hours that do not move
Because all clocks are stopped.
Blackness of nights that do not see
Because all lights are out.
Madrid
Beneath the bullets!
Madrid
Beneath the bombing planes!
Madrid
In the fearful dark!

Oh, mind of man!
So long to make a light
Of fire,
         of oil,
                 of gas,
And now electric rays.
So long to make a clock
Of sun-dial,
         sand-dial,
               figures,
And now two hands that mark the hours.
Oh, mind of man!
So long to struggle upward out of darkness
To a measurement of time--
And now:
These guns,
These brainless killers in the hills
Trained on Madrid
To stop the clocks in the towers
And shatter all their faces
Into a million bits of nothingness
In the city
That will not bow its head
To darkness and to greed again:
That dares to dream a cleaner dream!
Oh, mind of man
Moulded into a metal shell--
Left-overs of the past
That rain dull hell and misery
On the world again--
Have your way
And stop the clocks!
Bomb out the lights!
And mock yourself!
Mock all the rights of those
Who live like decent folk.
Let guns alone salute
The wisdom of our age
With dusty powder marks
On yet another page of history.
Let there be no sense of time,
Nor measurement of light and dark.
In fact, no light at all!
Let mankind fall
Into the deepest pit that ignorance can dig
For us all!

Descent is quick.
To rise again is slow.

      To break that NO apart
      Will be to break the human heart.

--Langston Hughes.