Lights on water. Under-echo. Wharves.
What madness has us here, swimming at midnight
naked, waiting for a ferry? A red-tipped mast
wags at us like a finger. I see the hull
of a white cruise ship. I want to travel –
Covent Garden, La Scala. The vast stars approve.
Tonight has sung the soul of Marguerite
to heaven – one of the oppressed made whole.
Bourgeois Faust has damned himself. I saw
in Mephistopheles, not devil, but History!
He offers gifts at a price. The choice is ours.
Karl Marx, even in water I don’t neglect you!
Six months ago I stood at John Courts corner
watching the silent, glum, suffering columns
go by up Queen Street. Tears seemed insufficient.
I gave myself to their Struggle. This was no opera.
Now music, stars, water, friendship seduce me.
Do revolutionaries laugh? We miss our ferry.