ten radical poems for national poetry day 2015

William Blake (1757-1827)

The Garden of LoveI went to the Garden of Love, And saw what I never had seen; A Chapel was built in the midst, Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut, And ‘Thou shalt not’ writ over the door; So I turned to the Garden of Love That so many sweet flowers bore.

And I saw it was filled with graves, And tombstones where flowers should be; And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds, And binding with briars my joys and desires.

Photo: York College ISLGP, flickr

Maya Angelou (1928-2014)

Still I RiseDoes my sassiness upset you? Why are you beset with gloom? ‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns, With the certainty of tides, Just like hopes springing high, Still I’ll rise.

Did you want to see me broken? Bowed head and lowered eyes? Shoulders falling down like teardrops. Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you? Don’t you take it awful hard ‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines Diggin’ in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes, You may kill me with your hatefulness, But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you? Does it come as a surprise That I dance like I’ve got diamonds At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame I rise Up from a past that’s rooted in pain I rise I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide, Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear I rise Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear I rise Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise I rise I rise.

Photo: People’s World, flickr

Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956)

And I always thoughtAnd I always thought: the very simplest words Must be enough. When I say what things are like Everyone’s heart must be torn to shreds. That you’ll go down if you don’t stand up for yourself Surely you see that.

Photo: Steve Eason

Thomas Hood (1799-1845)

The Song of the ShirtWith 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, Till the brain begins to swim; Work — work — work, Till the eyes are heavy and dim! Seam, and gusset, and band, Band, and gusset, and seam, Till over the buttons I fall asleep, And sew them on in a dream!

“Oh, Men, with Sisters dear! Oh, men, with Mothers and Wives! It is not linen you’re wearing out, But human creatures’ lives! Stitch — stitch — stitch, In poverty, hunger and dirt, Sewing at once, with a double thread, A Shroud as well as a Shirt.

“But why do I talk of Death? That Phantom of grisly bone, I hardly fear its terrible shape, It seems so like my own — It seems so like my own, Because of the fasts I keep; Oh, God! that bread should be so dear And flesh and blood so cheap!

“Work — work — work! My labour never flags; And what are its wages? A bed of straw, A crust of bread — and rags. That shattered roof — this naked floor — A table — a broken chair — And a wall so blank, my shadow I thank For sometimes falling there!

“Work — work — work! From weary chime to chime, Work — work — work, As prisoners work for crime! Band, and gusset, and seam, Seam, and gusset, and band, Till the heart is sick, and the brain benumbed, As well as the weary hand.

“Work — work — work, In the dull December light, And work — work — work, When the weather is warm and bright — While underneath the eaves The brooding swallows cling As if to show me their sunny backs And twit me with the spring.

“Oh! but to breathe the breath Of the cowslip and primrose sweet — With the sky above my head, And the grass beneath my feet; For only one short hour To feel as I used to feel, Before I knew the woes of want And the walk that costs a meal!

“Oh! but for one short hour! A respite however brief! No blessèd leisure for Love or Hope, But only time for Grief! A little weeping would ease my heart, But in their briny bed My tears must stop, for every drop Hinders needle and thread!”

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, — Would that its tone could reach the Rich! — She sang this “Song of the Shirt!”

Claude McKay (1889-1948)

If We Must DieIf we must die, let it not be like hogs Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot, While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs, Making their mock at our accursèd lot. If we must die, O let us nobly die, So that our precious blood may not be shed In vain; then even the monsters we defy Shall be constrained to honor us though dead! O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe! Though far outnumbered let us show us brave, And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow! What though before us lies the open grave? Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack, Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

Photo: twiga_269, flickr

Adrienne Rich (1929-2012)

Phantasia for Elvira Shatayev(leader of a women’s climbing team, all of whom died in a storm on Lenin Peak, August 1974. Later, Shatayev’s husband found and buried the bodies.)

The cold felt cold until our blood grew colder then the wind died down and we slept

If in this sleep I speak it’s with a voice no longer personal (I want to say with voices) When the wind tore our breath from us at last we had no need of words For months for years each one of us had felt her own yes growing in her slowly forming as she stood at windows waited for trains mended her rucksack combed her hair What we were to learn was simply what we had up here as out of all words that yes gathered its forces fused itself and only just in time to meet a No of no degrees the black hole sucking the world in

I feel you climbing toward me your cleated bootsoles leaving their geometric bite colossally embossed on microscopic crystals as when I trailed you in the Caucasus Now I am further ahead than either of us dreamed anyone would be I have become the white snow packed like asphalt by the wind the women I love lightly flung against the mountain that blue sky our frozen eyes unribboned through the storm we could have stitched that blueness together like a quilt

You come (I know this) with your love your loss strapped to your body with your tape-recorder camera ice-pick against advisement to give us burial in the snow and in your mind While my body lies out here flashing like a prism into your eyes how could you sleep You climbed here for yourself we climbed for ourselves

When you have buried us told your story Ours does not end we stream into the unfinished the unbegun the possible Every cell’s core of heat pulsed out of us into the thin air of the universe the armature of rock beneath these snows this mountain which has taken the imprint of our minds through changes elemental and minute as those we underwent to bring each other here choosing ourselves each other and this life whose every breath and grasp and further foothold is somewhere still enacted and continuing

Photo: twiga_269, flickr

In the diary I wrote: Now we are ready and each of us knows it I have never loved like this I have never seen my own forces so taken up and shared and given back After the long training the early sieges we are moving almost effortlessly in our love

In the diary as the wind began to tear at the tents over us I wrote: We know now we have always been in danger down in our separateness and now up here together but till now we had not touched our strength

In the diary torn from my fingers I had written: What does love mean what does it mean “to survive”

A cable of blue fire ropes our bodies burning together in the snow We will not live to settle for less We have dreamed of this all of our lives

Linton Kwesi Johnson (1952- )

Mekkin histriMekkin histri Now tell mi someting Mistah govahment Tell mi someting

How lang yu really feel Yu coulda keep wi andah heel Wen di trute done reveal Bout how yu grab an steal Bout how yu mek yu crooked deal Mek yu crooked deal?

Well doun in soutall Where peach did get fall Di Asians dem faam up a human wall Gense di fashist an dem police sheil An dem show dat di Asians gat plenty zeal Gat plenty zeal, gat plenty zeal

It is noh mistri Wi mekkin histri It is noh mistri Wi winnin victri Now tell mi someting Mistah police spokesman Tell mi someting

How lang yu really tink Wi woulda tek yu batn lick Yu jackboot kick Yu dutty bag a tricks An yu racist pallyticks Yu racist pallyticks?

Well doun in Bristal Dey ad noh pistal But dem chase di babylan away

Man yu shoulda si yu babylan How dem really run away Yu shoulda si yu babylan dem dig up dat dey Dig up dat dey, dig up dat dey

It is noh mistri Wi mekkin histri It is noh mistri Wi winnin victri Now tell mi someting Mistah ritewing man Tell mi someting

How lang yu really feel Wi woulda grovel an squeal Wen soh much murdah canceal Wen wi woun cyaan heal Wen wi feel di way wi feel Feel di way wi feel?

Well dere woz Toxteh An dere woz moss side An a lat a addah places Whey di police ad to hide

Well dere woz Brixtan An dere woz Chapeltoun An a lat a addah place dat woz burnt to di groun Burnt to di groun, burnt to di groun

It is noh mistri Wi mekkin histri It is noh mistri Wi winnin victri

Photo: Bryan Ledgard, flickr

Photo: Travis, flickr

Hans Magnus Enzensberger (1929- )

Karl Heinrich Marxgigantic grandfather jehovah-bearded on brown daguerrotypes i see your face in the snow-white aura despotic quarrelsome and your papers in the linen press: butcher’s bills inaugural addresses warrants for your arrest

your massive body i see in the ‘wanted’ book gigantic traitor displaced person in tail coat and plastron consumptive sleepless your gall-bladder scorched by heavy cigars salted gherkins laudanum and liqueur

i see your house in the rue d’alliance dean street grafton terrace gigantic bourgeois domestic tyrant in worn-out slippers: soot and ‘economic shit’ usury ‘as usual’ children’s coffins rumours of sordid affairs

no machine-gun in your prophet’s hand: i see it calmly in the british museum

under the green lamp break up your own house with terrible patience gigantic founder for the sake of other houses in which you never woke up

gigantic zaddik i see you betrayed by your disciples only your enemies remained what they were: i see your face on the last picture of april eighty-two an iron mask: the iron mask of freedom

Photo: Eduardo Fonseca Arraes, flickr

Peggy Seeger (1935- )

I’m Gonna Be an EngineerWhen I was a little girl I wished I was a boy I tagged along behind the gang and wore my corduroys. Everybody said I only did it to annoy But I was gonna be an engineer

Mamma said, “Why can’t you be a lady? Your duty is to make me the mother of a pearl Wait until you’re older, dear And maybe you’ll be glad that you’re a girl.

Dainty as a Dresden statue, gentle as a Jersey cow, Smooth as silk, gives cream and milk Learn to coo, learn to moo That’s what you do to be a lady, now.

When I went to school I learned to write and how to read History, geography and home economy And typing is a skill that every girl is sure to need To while away the extra time until the time to breed And then they had the nerve to ask, what would I like to be? I says, “I’m gonna be an engineer!”

“No, you only need to learn to be a lady The duty isn’t yours, for to try to run the world An engineer could never have a baby Remember, dear, that you’re a girl”

She’s smart – for a woman. I wonder how she got that way? You get no choice, you get no voice Just stay mum, pretend you’re dumb. That’s how you come to be a lady, today.

Well, I started as a typist but I studied on the sly Working out the day and night so I could qualify And every time the boss came in, he pinched me on the thigh Said, “I’ve never had an engineer!”

“You owe it to the job to be a lady The duty of the staff is to give the boss a whirl The wages that you get are crummy, maybe But it’s all you get, ‘cause you’re a girl”

Then Jimmy came along and we set up a conjugation We were busy every night with loving recreation I spent my days at work so he could get an education And now he’s an engineer!

He said: “I know you’ll always be a lady The duty of my darling is to love me all her life Could an engineer look after or obey me? Remember, dear, that you’re my wife!”

As soon a Jimmy got a job, I studied hard again Then busy at me turret-lathe a year or two, and then The morning that the twins were born, Jimmy says to them “Your mother was an engineer!”

“You owe it to the kids to be a lady Dainty as a dish-rag, faithful as a chow Stay at home, you got to mind the baby Remember you’re a mother now!”

Every time I turn around there’s something else to do Cook a meal or mend a sock or sweep a floor or two Listening to Jimmy Young - it makes me want to spew I was gonna be an engineer.

I only wish that I could be a lady I’d do the lovely things that a lady’s s’posed to do I wouldn’t even mind if only they would pay me Then I could be a person too.

What price for a woman? You can buy her for a ring of gold, To love and obey, without any pay, You get a cook and a nurse for better or worse You don’t need a purse when a lady is sold.

Photo: Tamara Cralu, flickr

Oh, but now the times are harder and me Jimmy’s got the sack; I went down to Vicker’s, they were glad to have me back.

But I’m a third-class citizen, my wages tell me that But I’m a first-class engineer!

The boss he says “We pay you as a lady, You only got the job because I can’t afford a man, With you I keep the profits high as may be, You’re just a cheaper pair of hands.”

You got one fault, you’re a woman; You’re not worth the equal pay. A bitch or a tart, you’re nothing but heart, Shallow and vain, you’ve got no brain,

Well, I listened to my mother and I joined a typing pool Listened to my lover and I put him through his school If I listen to the boss, I’m just a bloody fool And an underpaid engineer

I been a sucker ever since I was a baby As a daughter, as a mother, as a lover, as a dear But I’ll fight them as a woman, not a lady I’ll fight them as an engineer!

Aimé Césaire (1913-2008)

Notebook of a Return to the Native Land [excerpt]At the end of daybreak. . . Beat it, I said to him, you cop, you lousy pig, beat it, I detest the flunkies of order and the cockchafers of hope. Beat it, evil grigri, you bedbug of a petty monk. Then I turned toward paradises lost for him and his kin, calmer than the face of a woman telling lies, and there, rocked by the flux of a never exhausted thought I nourished the wind, I unlaced the monsters and heard rise, from the other side of disaster, a river of turtledoves and savanna clover which I carry forever in my depths height-deep as the twentieth floor of the most arrogant houses and as a guard against the putrefying force of crepuscular surroundings, surveyed night and day by a cursed venereal sun.

At the end of daybreak burgeoning with frail coves, the hungry Antilles, the Antilles pitted with smallpox, the Antilles dynamited by alcohol, stranded in the mud of this bay, in the dust of this town sinisterly stranded.

Photo: Selden Vestrit, flickr

At the end of daybreak, the extreme, deceptive desolate eschar on the wound of the waters; the martyrs who do not bear witness; the flowers of blood that fade and scatter in the empty wind like the screeches of babbling parrots; an aged life mendaciously smiling, its lips opened by vacated agonies; an aged poverty rotting under the sun, silently; an aged silence bursting with tepid pustules, the awful futility of our raison d’être.

At the end of daybreak, on this very fragile earth thickness exceeded in a humiliating way by its grandiose future—the vol- canoes will explode, the naked water will bear away the ripe sun stains and nothing will be left but a tepid bubbling pecked at by sea birds—the beach of dreams and the insane awakening.

At the end of daybreak, this town sprawled-flat, toppled from its common sense, inert, winded under its geometric weight of an eternally renewed cross, indocile to its fate, mute, vexed no matter what, incapable of growing with the juice of this earth, self-conscious, clipped, reduced, in breach of fauna and flora.

rs21 – revolutionary socialism in the 21st century – is a group based in Britain.

We’re revolutionaries and internationalists who believe that the working class is the central force for change and that fighting oppression is central to socialism.

We aim to organise in an open and collaborative way, getting involved in activity, putting forward out views, debating ideas and learning from others.

Find out more at our website: www.rs21.org.uk