I cried
I cried watching
John Lennon
doing Imagine
on a white piano
I cried during
Missing
the movie of Allende’s Chile
crushed by imperialism
(of the America type)
I cried and cheered
at the end
of the Buena Vista Social Club
because of the socialist struggles
of Cuba and its people
I cried reading
Robert Tressell’s
The Ragged Trousered
Philanthropists
(dad told a tale
back in the old days
of buying and distributing
copies to workers)
(the book a present in 1963
from mom’s older brother
John and his wife Fawzia
the two fleeing through Africa
to England in the period
teachers were being silenced)
I cried
(just now)
on unearthing another
revolutionary treatise
Rape of the Fair Country
with my teacher-activist mom’s
initials in it and the date 2/3/1959
(living in Claremont still
and I guess she expectant
with my brother Mike)
the last lines are rather prophetic
‘For ages deep wrongs have been hopelessly bourne;
Despair shall no longer our spirits dismay,
Not wither the arm when upraised for the fray;
The conflict for freedom is gathering nigh,
We live to secure it, or gloriously die!’