It is Labour Day—
So the sansculottes are made
To pay for returning home
From official lockdown
In unwanted city and town.
The rich are poor,
So they receive stimulus packages
And loan waivers.
The poor are rich
And need no such favours.
In any case, when we open again,
What choice will they have
But to settle for wages
That we would have found
Commensurate with Profit’s rebound.
The centuries since Voltaire
And his gang were aberrations.
Nature, we know, ordained inequality,
So nothing that Capital does is faulty.
The only treason against Nature
Is the uppity pretense of reason.
The elite and the mob are now
Hand in glove,
As dear Hannah Arendt smiles
In despair from above.
A Rogue’s gallery takes charge
Of a vainly protesting world.
Evangelicals alone have knowledge
Of politics and god.
O, Chicago of 1886,
The bricks you laid are indeed red,
But with Labour’s blood.
The meat and bone of billions
Is dressed as juicy feed
To meet dynasaur need.
Yet, remembering that labour
Created the wonders we have,
Let us true to that memory live,
And say, with a Copernicus, that
However you deny,
The truth we celebrate will have its day.
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