If I Was Not A Soldier

If I wasn’t a soldier, a soldier said,

What would I be? – I wouldn’t be,

It’s hardly likely it seems to me,

A money lord or armament maker,

Territorial magnate or business chief.

I’d probably be just a working man,

The slave of a licensed thief, –

One of the criminals I’m shielding now!

If I wasn’t a soldier, a soldier said,

I’d be down and out as likely as not

And suffering the horrible starving lot

Of hundreds and thousands of my kind,

And that would make me a Red as well

Till I rose with the rest and was batoned or shot

By some cowardly brute – such as I am now!

From Second Hymn to Lenin

By Hugh Macdiarmid, 1935