"...[communism] makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic." -Karl Marx, The German Ideology.
so long since the scare, now, and still
when my fiancé praises Marx
my parents think he is a madman.
Marx, they say, and shake
their bourgeois heads. to think
a man so smart could go
the way of weakness,
turn his back on Adam Smith,
and dance his way to poverty
and death beneath a dictator
and the hammer and sickle.
all he wants, I say to them,
is to live many lives at once
and still have enough in his pocket
to buy breakfast at a small cafe.
3 comments:
Megan,
Well put, how well does any of us know another? Especially one from another time.
rel
Excellnet poem. Reminds me of my parents.
I appreciate this piece very much. My father talked about Marx often and my mother was always saying "SSSHHH!" as if to say "not infront of the children" - :)
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