Rosa Luxemburg

Variations on a theme of (Robert) Hayden

If somehow, against all odds, humanity

survives, if we surmount the warming, wars,

fascist revivals, and nuclear meltdowns marching upon us,

if somehow the miracle of world revolution arises, somehow endures,

then the world we invent, our new insitutions, our new morals

will stem, perhaps unknowingly, from this Luxemburg,

this Red Rosa, this apostle of mass strikes as arousers of billions,

this annalist of imperial slaughters in Southern Africa and far beyond,

this chronicler of capital destroying villages‘ solidarities and communion,

this woman of twisted body, murdered by so-called Social Democratic comrades

as a Pole, as a Jew, as a dissenter who understood dispute and negativity as the keys

to community and solidarity,

indeed, saw that disagreement may feel like shit

but is the only manure for creative growth.

From every river to every sea

A land

with

a people

coveted

by another.

A horn blows.

Hospital walls come

tumbling down.

Children and adults,

if lucky, flee.

Elderly people,

people just like me,

watch in fear.

Gaza?

West Bank?

Ukraine?

Rojava?

Every people

must be free.

Jim Crow Judaism

There was no hypocrisy

in their Jim Crow Judaism

when my aunt and uncle

despised both their dime store’s

black clientele

and my civil rights activism,

nor any hesitation

to use the racist slurs

of D.C. in the ‘50s,

“blackie,” “schvartzes,” and “colored”

since the “n-word” was too

“lower class” in the circles

they lived in.

Nor were they slow to support a

zero-guilt Zionism

of ardent endorsement

for Israeli land-grabs,

and a disdain for shiksas like Judy

a woman unknown to them, who,

they assured me,

would later call me “Jew”—thus also ensuring

that they were neither invited to our wedding

nor ever met our daughter

to call her shiksa too.