The Dearth of Communism

On the telly, hundreds of Moscow denizens

are pulling down the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky,

the father of the KGB, while an American reporter

intones that what we're seeing

is the Death of Communism celebration,

that great day when the Russian people found out

that nobody owns history.

I thought I was the only one

who was mourning for Communism; then I

talked to Larry Fagin as we walked through

Coldwater Canyon Park;

and he said that he mourned too,

and so did his wife, Susan Mustard. It was the last good

and great idea,

the last time we brought credit to the species,

that we could shake off our shackles,

and our mind-forged manacles

and let the good times roll.

Karl Marx at his table in the

reading room at the British Museum, poring through a stack of lit,

probing for the pulse of history, the instant that we wrote the words:

"From each according to his means, to each according to his needs,"

did he already see in his mind's eye that some day his formula

would be swept away?

Now we live in the Corporate state;

and we better not get used to it.

According to our patrons, from here on out

it's dog-eat-dog. The Peruvian miner

and the Detroit engine worker will be

at each other's throats; sleeping in their Dodge RAMs

out beyond the shadows the gas flares throw

into the defeated dust,

waiting for those with the wherewithal to dine

to toss off a scrap of food.

By the time Dzerzhinsky founded

the Bolshevick secret police,

Communism was dead already

and lying in state.

Maybe that's why it feels like there's

such a dearth of Communism around here tonight;

there's not enough love

to make our world go around.

Source: Dear Oxygen: New & Selected Poems 1966-2011 (University of New Orleans, 2011)