It  is  Labour  Day—

So the sansculottes are made

To pay for returning home

From official lockdown

In unwanted city and town.

 

The rich are poor,

So they receive stimulus packages

And loan waivers.

The poor are rich

And need no such favours.

In any case, when we open again,

What choice will they have

But to settle for  wages

That we would have found

Commensurate with Profit’s rebound.

 

The centuries since Voltaire

And his gang were aberrations.

Nature, we know, ordained inequality,

So nothing that Capital does is faulty.

The only treason against Nature

Is the uppity pretense of reason.

 

The elite and the mob are now

Hand in glove,

As dear Hannah Arendt smiles

In despair from above.

 

A Rogue’s gallery takes charge

Of a vainly protesting world.

Evangelicals alone have knowledge

Of politics and god.

 

O, Chicago of  1886,

The bricks you laid  are indeed red,

But with  Labour’s  blood.

The meat and bone of  billions

Is dressed  as juicy feed

To  meet  dynasaur  need.

 

Yet, remembering that labour

Created the wonders we have,

Let us true to that memory live,

And say, with a Copernicus, that

However you deny,

The truth we celebrate will have its day.

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