Fascism: I sometimes fear---
I sometimes fear that
people think that fascism arrives in fancy dress
worn by grotesques and monsters
as played out in endless re-runs of the Nazis.
Fascism arrives as your friend.
It will restore your honour,
make you feel proud,
protect your house,
give you a job,
clean up the neighbourhood,
remind you of how great you once were,
clear out the venal and the corrupt,
remove anything you feel is unlike you---
It doesn’t walk in saying,
“Our programme means militias, mass imprisonments,
transportations, war, and persecution.
Michael Rosen, 2014.
The Nobodies--
Fleas dream of buying themselves a dog, and nobodies dream
of escaping poverty: that one magical day good luck will
suddenly rain down on them- will rain down in buckets. But
good luck doesn't even fall in a fine drizzle, no matter
how hard the nobodies summon it, even if their left hand is
tickling, or if they begin the new day with their right foot, or
start the new year with a change of brooms.
The nobodies: nobody's children, owners of nothing. The
nobodies: the no ones, the nobodied, running like rabbits,
dying through life, screwed every which way.
Who don't speak languages, but dialects.
Who don't have religions, but superstitions.
Who don't create art, but handicrafts.
Who don't have culture, but folklore.
Who are not human beings, but human resources.
Who do not have names, but numbers.
Who do not appear in the history of the world, but in the
police blotter of the local paper.
The nobodies, who are not worth the bullet that kills them
Eduardo Galeano
In Those Years.
In those years, people will say, we lost track
of the meaning of us, of you
we found ourselves
reduced to I
and the whole thing became
silly, ironic, terrible:
we were trying to live a personal life
and, yes, that was the only life
we could bear witness to
But the great dark birds of history screamed and plunged
into our personal weather
They were headed somewhere else but their beaks and pinions drove
along the shore, through the rags of fog
where we stood saying I
Adrienne Rich. Dark Fields Of The Republic.
The Individualist Hymn
Before dying in the mud on the streets
we would imitate
Bresci and Ravachol;
anyone who extends a hand to you,
bourgeoisie,
is a person unworthy of looking at the sun.
Grinding machines tear the beggars to pieces
and their wives
are forever pale and weeping,
The fields remain fallow, the
miners buried
and the workers crushed forever by murder.
And to those who don’t give in, open the tombs,
prepare the
bombs, sharpen the knife,
action is the ideal!
France, on the watch with the guillotine,
chops off the head
of anyone who wants to punish her.
Cowardly Spain strangles with
a garrote and murderous
Italy guns down those who aren’t
accustomed to trembling.
Hanged in America, throats cut in Africa,
forever tortured at
Montjuich in Spain,
but the individualist still knows how to
strike
the sorry breed of gentleman thugs.
And to those who don’t give in, open the tombs,
prepare the
bombs, sharpen the knife,
action is the ideal!
As long as we are a herd it’s appropriate that there’s
a
social gang passing laws;
as long as the sun of anarchy doesn’t
shine,
we will always see the slaughtering of the populace.
Be very afraid, coppers, when you hear
the dynamite exploding
against the oppressors.
We are enemies of all cops and
scoundrels,
And one against all, we will scatter them.
And to those who don’t give in, open the tombs,
prepare the
bombs, sharpen the knife,
action is the ideal!
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