Karl Marx

[Martha Gimenez <gimenez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

karl heinrich marx
	Hans Magnus Enzensberger

gigantic grandfather
jehovah-bearded
on brown daguerrotypes
i see your face
in the snow-white aura
despotic quarrelsome
and your papers in the linen press:
butcher's bills
inaugural addresses
warrants for your arrest

your massive body
i see in the "wanted" book
gigantic traitor
displaced person
in tail coat and plastron
consumptive sleepless
your gall-bladder scorched
by heavy cigars
salted gherkins laudanum
and liqueur

i see your house
in the rue d'alliance
dean street grafton terrace
gigantic bourgeois
domestic tyrant
in worn-out slippers:
soot and "economic shit" *
usury "as usual" *
children's coffins
backstair calamities

no machine-gun
in your prophet's hand:
i see it calmly
in the british museum
under the green lamp
break up your own house
with a terrible patience
gigantic founder
for the sake of other houses
in which you never woke up

gigantic zaddik
i see you betrayed
by your disciples:
only your enemies
remained what they were:
I see your face
on the last picture
of april eighty-two:
an iron mask:
an iron mask of freedom

*  Quotations from Marx's letters to Engels in the 1850s and 1860s.
   H.M.E.