Friday, January 10, 2014

Political Poem

By Amiri Baraka
(for Basil)


Luxury, then, is a way of
being ignorant, comfortably
An approach to the open market
of least information. Where theories   
can thrive, under heavy tarpaulins   
without being cracked by ideas.
(I have not seen the earth for years   
and think now possibly “dirt” is   
negative, positive, but clearly
social. I cannot plant a seed, cannot   
recognize the root with clearer dent   
than indifference. Though I eat
and shit as a natural man ( Getting up   
from the desk to secure a turkey sandwich   
and answer the phone: the poem undone   
undone by my station, by my station,   
and the bad words of Newark.) Raised up   
to the breech, we seek to fill for this   
crumbling century. The darkness of love,
in whose sweating memory all error is forced.
Undone by the logic of any specific death. (Old gentlemen   
who still follow fires, tho are quieter   
and less punctual. It is a polite truth   
we are left with. Who are you? What are you   
saying? Something to be dealt with, as easily.
The noxious game of reason, saying, “No, No,   
you cannot feel,” like my dead lecturer   
lamenting thru gipsies his fast suicide.

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