Hateful Opinions

The opinions of class war and revolution,
armed frenzy, fury, peasant uprisings,
death camps, purges, civil unrest and change—
where your shadow falls across my life,
is that a sign of joy?
Surely some hypocrisy lies within.
 
Opposing opinions, our communal orders—
you speak with your tongue,
while I hold on to my labor.
Your feet climb my highest horn—
what darker day could yet arrive?
 
Why does it take courage for gun and glory,
while these dividers measure the world
with sickle or hammer,
and if they behead the thinker,
is the world so much diminished?
 
On the dead body falls the dripping mark
of central control;
yet the mind of a free man
they still search for endlessly.
 
My foolish head, reading ideologies,
like an idiot turns the pages of power—
and still man believes, still man loves to think.
Will thought be halted by tickling provocation?
 
The hammer strikes,
and the share of the plough becomes the sickle.
Ah, if only I could love you instead,
if only I could explain the unruly logic
of my restless mind.
 
O God, I know it all, and he knows it too.
Winter fastens itself like nails upon a coffin,
and though their pipe smoke burns away dreams,
the daylight yet reveals itself,
bearing freedom like a burden.
 
With a dash I left—
perhaps with insult,
yet this much I swear:
crowds gather,
they measure hateful opinions with the sickle,
and he who sits upon the Director’s throne,
in place of God,
to him I must explain the meaning of his reign—
the errors within it.
 
Philosophy, if rightly understood,
stands firm without force.
Did I not once believe
that opposing opinions
might have been passed by,
without attack,
by merely walking beside them?