Communism Is a Round Sun Rising

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Communism is the rose and the lilac the future and the arcing gull.
Communism is the sun circling the earth and the alert faces that greet it.
Communism is the geometry that works, the morning wind,
brushing across my skin and across your skin.
Communism is the immense machine wheel that makes hope, pounding
and rolling, humming and singing, night and day.
Waves weaving the sea, fish leaping, seagull jazz flutter, ship weaving the waves,
communism is that ship and those waves.
Communism is the blast furnace that makes new knowledge.
Communism is the geometry and the physics and the history and the equations.
Communism is the bodies and the movements and the bodies in movement.
Communism is the shout and the cheer, the lilac and the rose,
communism is alive.

Communism is not a confession.
Communism is not a surrender.
Communism is not bankruptcy but the invalidation of capital,
the transmuting of soybean futures into bread and shirts and socks, of gold into hammer
     and nails.
Communism is the bread knife and the bread cutting board
(wood cutting board generations old, shaped like a horse, hanging on a nail on the wall),
communism is the mortar and pestle,
communism is the shimmering flag of the tomato and the
seditionary march chant of the garlic.
Communism is not a confession but an insistence,
communism is an insistence, a stone staircase,
an overthrown and liberated winter palace,
an open door.

Communism is a reality real as a rounded stone in the hand.
Communism is the roots craving earth and the buds reaching for light,
unity and conflict of opposites -
communism is the dream of juice within the thousand buds
that yield forth their proclamation of apple, the apple
riveting into the earth its twangy voice to bring to birth
the champion throng of buds,
transformation of quantity into quality and of quality into quantity -
communism is the lone apple tree its fire drawn dry
with apples spread simmering about its feet, communism
is the anthem orchard growing new in the fields of ferment,
negation of the negation.
Communism is a possibility, scratching sand, gleaming frost, a possibility
that makes itself into a shining mountain.
Communism is the geometry and the physics,
communism is the sculpture and the music,
communism is the knowledge and the desire, the lily
and the bonfire, communism
is the thriving and the will, the wheat and the iron.
Communism is the wheat and the iron and the ship that bears them.
Communism is the violin and the trumpet, the spark and the drum.
Communism is the waves reaping the sea breeze and the ship reaping the waves,
communism is the rejoicing of drums at dawn and at evening,
clashing and rejoining,
the living ocean.

Communism is not imaginary.
Communism is not a mystery.
Communism is as real and clear as an eye or a hand.
Communism is not a dream of reason, it does not produce monsters,
communism overthrows capitalists, it is a reason to dream.
Communism is a cheer and a shout,
communism is the morning wind,
communism is not imaginary or a mystery, it is
a wellspring of imagination, it is a floodlight
that sweeps away fog.

Communism is a round sun rising,
communism is the sun circling the earth.
Communism is the ironworkers and stonemasons building the barricades in the streets of
     Paris 1871.
Communism is the workers of Paris at the barricades
with expropriated cannon aimed back at the federal army.
Communism is the lark and the gull, the hawk and the eagle,
communism is the face that fills with dawnlight at the song of the lark,
communism is the song of the rivet and the dance of the plow, tractor factory
name October, collective farm named Red Flag, 1923, 1934,
communism is the lily and the bonfire, communism
is the determined face in Leningrad pushing through the siege, 1944,
the train bringing relief crossing on tracks built on frozen Lake Ladoga,
communism is barricades in Paris, ironworkers and stonemasons,
communism is Lenin writing newspaper articles from exile,
communism is Stalin remaining near the front in Moscow, the armies of the empires of
            capital within site of the city towers,
Stalin speaking to the Red Army troops: they're at the city's edge, you know what you
             have to do, our hope is in your hands now,
communism is the Chinese Red Army setting out on a night of storm, Hunan, 1934,
the Long March, the 8000 mile march, communism
is the history and physics, the algebra and geometry,
the violin that calls and the violin that answers, the wind
and the rain, warm rain on baked earth.

Communism is the lilac and the rose, the wind and the hearth,
communism is the sculpture and the sculpting,
communism is the statue in the public plaza with arms held high
woman with hammer man with sickle, communism
is the woman working and the man working whose
coursing forms convey their force and reason
into the curves and light that speak through the statue in its voice of marble.
Communism is the wheat and the iron, the dance and the singing,
communism is the lavender whisper at evening and the coral flute call at dawn.
Communism is the calm face and the steady movement,
eyelid, lip, finger, breath,
communism is the debate and the decision, the dialectic and the material,
communism is the history and the physics, the philosophy and the geometry,
communism is the meeting and the march, the street and the workers who fill it,
communism is knowledge and action, communism
is the material and the dialectic, the sun circling the earth and the cheering faces
that greet it, the first grapes and the morning dew.

History:
Barricades in Paris 1871, song that shouts "We shall be all," yes.
Railroad worker William Vandergriff who died by Army gunfire as he held the switch
             shut so
the scab trains couldn't get through, Pittsburgh 1877, yes.
A pamphlet in 1848 that made lightning in the mind and thunder in the heart,
barricades in streets and invasion of the halls of parliament by workers, Germany and
     France 1848, yes.
Lenin writing newspaper articles from exile and Stalin
remaining through the siege of Moscow, yes.
Barefoot doctors men and women erasing dysentery and syphilis and food poisoning
     from villages, China 1952, yes.
Bobrovskaya taking the train home late, her midwife training her alibi to deliver
     Bolshevik underground leaflets, yes.
The women of Paris in 1871 who wrote back to the counts and barons of Versailles: your
     offer
of peace is for peace in chains, we do not surrender to you, ladies and gentlemen, we
     wage war on you, yes.
Bookbinder Eugène Varlin standing and falling and standing again under the gun-butts of
     the French army, Paris 1871, yes.
The International Brigades on the Jarama and the Ebro, 1936, 1937, song that calls "Viva
     la Quince Brigada," cheer that cheers "No Pasarán!", yes.
Red Guards who stormed the Party offices and proclaimed
overthrow of those Party members who were still clinging with nervous fingers to the
     free market that is free for the kings and princes of capital, Shanghai Commune
     1967, yes,
history:
Communism is the wheat and the iron, the carnation and the sunflower, the theory and
     the practice,
communism is the history and the physics, the algebra and the geometry,
communism is the navigation mathematics and the wings bounding into flight,
the lightning and the thunder and the multitude minds that understand them-

Communism is the rose and the lilac the rain and the rainbow.
Communism is a revolution the revolution that is not a dinner party, communism is
the deluge that washes away the silt of capital
and it is the quickening shower that fertilizes the earth.
Communism is the gull and the sea wind that carries it.
Communism is the statue and the ground it rests on.
Communism is yesterday and today, today and tomorrow.
Communism is the song that shouts "We shall be all!"
Communism is the red hill of glory.
Communism is the star that incites the great breath of hope.
Communism is history, workers in Moscow, thousands marching in the streets, with
     pictures of Stalin and Lenin held high, with hammer-and-sickle flags,
shouting, no more free market, shouting, down with capitalism, 1992, yes, history.
Communism is the history and the economic analysis the philosophy and the political
     party.
Communism is the wheat and the iron,
the dream of a new world and the will to bring it into being.
Communism will continue:
we will continue:
circling the earth our song-sparked faces illuminated by the flames of the works of all the
     hours of all the days:
communism is a round sun rising, a red sun rising,
yesterday and today, today and tomorrow,
communism is alive!