“Oh, how we so love harmony!”
We want to see the world translucent, not opaque.
Life for us is but sound, a sleepy, tonal trance,
and the working class like perpetual dissonance.
We see peace where there are battles and storms:
we see beauty in death, and truth in a pun.
And we clang against hearts, and cry over the fact
that all this is dust and rust, the vapor of demented blood.
So, how do we break the prison gratings of tyrants,
when all our bards are eunuchs and castrates?
“Chains are a sign, and gratings a chord.
Radiance from an ass. And peace from lion snouts...”
Harmony lives not only in patches of sunlight.
Among Great Liars there is also harmony.
Only the liars will die, but truth from century to century
will flow into a single chord, where the worker is sound.
1922