Category: Poetry
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A Fray at May Day
I stood beside my comrades, and held my banner proud,While my good comrade Nina, standing straight ahead, flew the Iranian flag. In less than a moment, and more than an instant, We were beset, by an unexpected threat, people upset by our support of Iran, there was no plan, no method to the madness,as these…
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The Internationale
Arise! ye workers, from your slumbers;Arise! ye prisoners of want.For reason in revolt now thundersAnd ends at last the age of “can’t”.Away with all your superstitionsServile masses, arise! arise!We’ll change henceforth [forthwith] the old tradition [conditions]And spurn the dust to win the prize. So comrades, come rallyAnd the last fight let us faceThe InternationaleUnites the…
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The Darkling Thrush
Poem by Thomas Hardy I leant upon a coppice gate When Frost was spectre-grey,And Winter’s dregs made desolate The weakening eye of day.The tangled bine-stems scored the sky Like strings of broken lyres,And all mankind that haunted nigh Had sought their household fires. The land’s sharp features seemed to be The Century’s corpse outleant,His crypt…
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The Song of the Shirt
By Thomas Hood WITH fingers weary and worn, With eyelids heavy and red, A woman sat in unwomanly rags, Plying her needle and thread— Stitch! stitch! stitch! In poverty, hunger, and dirt, And still with a voice of dolorous pitch She sang the “Song of the Shirt.” “Work! work! work! While the cock is crowing aloof!…
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Hey You, Riot Policeman
lyrics by Chris Sievey I said hey you, riot policeman,please have you got the time?They always say ask a policeman,so I am asking youSee I need to catch a bus to Wythenshawe HospitalBut in the mayhem and confusion,I’ve lost all track of time Hey you, riot policeman, have you got the time?I said hey you,…
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A Mis Amigos (To My Friends)
By Jose Marti When one diesIn the arms of a grateful homeland,Death ends, prison is shattered;Life, at last, with dying, begins! Oh, more than a world, more! When glorySnatches us from this narrow dwelling,The spirit grows,Heaven opens, the world expandsAnd among worlds we dawn. Despot, look here how your blindAnxious yearning conspires against you:Look upon…
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United Fruit Company
By Pablo Neruda When the trumpet blared everythingon earth was preparedand Jehova distributed the worldto Coca-Cola Inc., Anaconda,Ford Motors and other entities:United Fruit Inc.reserved for itself the juiciest,the central seaboard of my land,America’s sweet waist.It rebabtized its landsthe “Banana Republics,”and upon the slumbering corpses,upon the restless heroeswho conquered renown,freedom and flags,it established the comic opera:it…
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Standard Oil Co.
By Pablo Neruda When the drill bored down toward the stony fissuresand plunged its implacable intestineinto the subterranean estates,and dead years, eyes of the ages,imprisoned plants’ rootsand scaly systemsbecame strata of water,fire shot up through the tubestransformed into cold liquid,in the customs house of the heights,issuing from its world of sinister depth,it encountered a pale…
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In Praise of Communism
By Bertolt Brecht It is reasonable. You can grasp it. It’s simple.You’re no exploiter, so you’ll understand.It is good for you. Look into it. Stupid men call it stupid,and the dirty call it dirty.It is against dirt and against stupidity. The exploiters call it a crime.But we know:It is the end of all crime. It…
Class Consciousness Project 