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Hereby demonstrating, for those of you who have known me since first year high school, that some teachers are formative. Not even going to lie, your "free world" means freedom to exploit is the single most useful turn of phrase in the world.
P.S. The first stanza is the truest thing for every country in the world. The last stanza, though- it's putting across both triumph and- I don't know what the word is. Circularity? The whole Don't put your trust in revolutions, they come back around, that's why they're called revolutions thing? I mean, the common man sitting in exclusive clubs isn't exactly a thing to look forward to, because the point is that exclusive clubs are terrible and self-perpetuating. It's lovely because it knows that revolution, singular, will never be enough, that you have to go about your revolutions but that it will never stop there.
P.P.S. The God that exists is the God of the common man. Like, dear Catholic Church, you had one job.
---
Lords Defenders of Law and Order
Lords defenders of Law and Order:
Your justice is it not perhaps class justice?
Civil Courts to protect private property
Criminal Courts to dominate the dominated
The freedom you talk about is freedom for capital
your "free world" means freedom to exploit
Your law is the shotgun and your order the jungle
you own the police
you own the judges
There are no landowners or bankers in your jails.
The bourgeois begins to go astray at his mother's breast
he has class prejudices from the day he's born
like the rattlesnake he's born with his poison sac
like the tiger shark he's born a man-eater
O God put an end to the status quo
tear out the fangs of the oligarchs
Let them be flushed away like the water in the basin
let them wither like weeds beneath the weed-killer
They are the "worms" when the Revolution comes
They are not body cells but microbes
Miscarriages of the new man, they must be cast out
Before they bear thorns let the tractor uproot them
The common man will take his ease in the exclusive clubs
he will take over private enterprises
the just man will rejoice in the People's Courts
We shall celebrate in spacious squares the anniversary of the Revolution
The God that exists is the God of the common man
- Ernesto Cardenal
P.S. The first stanza is the truest thing for every country in the world. The last stanza, though- it's putting across both triumph and- I don't know what the word is. Circularity? The whole Don't put your trust in revolutions, they come back around, that's why they're called revolutions thing? I mean, the common man sitting in exclusive clubs isn't exactly a thing to look forward to, because the point is that exclusive clubs are terrible and self-perpetuating. It's lovely because it knows that revolution, singular, will never be enough, that you have to go about your revolutions but that it will never stop there.
P.P.S. The God that exists is the God of the common man. Like, dear Catholic Church, you had one job.
---
Lords Defenders of Law and Order
Lords defenders of Law and Order:
Your justice is it not perhaps class justice?
Civil Courts to protect private property
Criminal Courts to dominate the dominated
The freedom you talk about is freedom for capital
your "free world" means freedom to exploit
Your law is the shotgun and your order the jungle
you own the police
you own the judges
There are no landowners or bankers in your jails.
The bourgeois begins to go astray at his mother's breast
he has class prejudices from the day he's born
like the rattlesnake he's born with his poison sac
like the tiger shark he's born a man-eater
O God put an end to the status quo
tear out the fangs of the oligarchs
Let them be flushed away like the water in the basin
let them wither like weeds beneath the weed-killer
They are the "worms" when the Revolution comes
They are not body cells but microbes
Miscarriages of the new man, they must be cast out
Before they bear thorns let the tractor uproot them
The common man will take his ease in the exclusive clubs
he will take over private enterprises
the just man will rejoice in the People's Courts
We shall celebrate in spacious squares the anniversary of the Revolution
The God that exists is the God of the common man
- Ernesto Cardenal
