Dunno shit about poetry, don't know why people make a big deal about it. It's just thoughts, observations, personal I think, dunno why the poet would expect others to be interested. Unless it's political, then it has Purpose. (Again ignorance, lack of education & culture are manifest. Tough shit.)

Manolis Anagnostakis-Mihalis Katsaros: Two poems

It was still a long time
It was still a long time before the dawn.
But I did not admit defeat.
I could see now how many hidden keepsakes I had to salvage
how many nests of water I had to preserve within the flames.

You talk, you show your wounds on the street, beside yourselves
you plant the panic that is strangling your heart on balconies,
as if it were a flag; you have studiously loaded the commodities,
your prediction is safe: The city will fall.


There, in a corner, I carefully gather order
I prudently shut off my last bastion
I hang severed limbs on the walls, I decorate
the windows with decapitated skulls, I weave
my nest with cut off hair and I wait,
standing up, alone, and as before, I wait.
Manolis Anagnostakis, 1956


In the dead forest
In the dead forest of language I walk
I light up the pale lamps in the streets
I try to resurrect
the names that have set hearts on fire.
In secret meetings
the names that led us
are assassinated.
Now, strangers strut around in mansions
they dress officially for galas
in diplomatic congresses they exchange handshakes
horrible memoranda
they attend feasts, they bow
Now they die.

Oh, Rosa Luxemburg, Lenin, poets,
Oh, Thälmann, Tanev
frozen in official halls,
you laurer-bearing heroes
mythical figures,
come.

Now powers are seeking caresses like cats in heat
on our roofs
presidents exchange visits
patriarchs are back on their thrones
they taunt us under
your legitimate frames.

Inside me, I have the memory
of the great crowd ascending the stairs with the flame, holding the sign
"All power to the Soviets!"
I have the memory of the locomotive
which brought Lenin
the enraged Mayakovsky, shooting the ministers
the students hugging the peasants.

How did they manage to escape the fire
Mr Director
the diplomatic attaché
Mr. Ambassador?

And now, what is to be done
in this cemetery of names,
in this cemetery of words?

How shall we baptize the fires anew
"Freedom", "Equality", "Soviets", "Power"?
Mihalis Katsaros, 1953

Translated by Lenin Reloaded.

http://indefenseofgreekworkers.blogspot.com.cy/2015/02/manolis-anagnostakis-mihalis-katsaros.html

Against The Police

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CmwO5tPUIAAkhfm.jpg

Miguel James, translated by Guillermo parra

Song of the Shirt
Thomas Hood

With fingers weary and worn,
With eyelids heavy and red,
A woman sat in unwomanly rags,
Plying her needle and thread—
Stitch! stitch! stitch!
In poverty, hunger, and dirt,
And still with a voice of dolorous pitch
She sang the “Song of the Shirt.”

“Work! work! work!
While the cock is crowing aloof!
And work—work—work,
Till the stars shine through the roof!
It’s O! to be a slave
Along with the barbarous Turk,
Where woman has never a soul to save,
If this is Christian work!

“Work—work—work,
Till the brain begins to swim;
Work—work—work,
Till the eyes are heavy and dim!
Seam, and gusset, and band,
Band, and gusset, and seam,
Till over the buttons I fall asleep,
And sew them on in a dream!

“O, men, with sisters dear!
O, men, with mothers and wives!
It is not linen you’re wearing out,
But human creatures’ lives!
Stitch—stitch—stitch,
In poverty, hunger and dirt,
Sewing at once, with a double thread,
A Shroud as well as a Shirt.

“But why do I talk of death?
That phantom of grisly bone,
I hardly fear his terrible shape,
It seems so like my own—
It seems so like my own,
Because of the fasts I keep;
Oh, God! that bread should be so dear.
And flesh and blood so cheap!

“Work—work—work!
My labour never flags;
And what are its wages? A bed of straw,
A crust of bread—and rags.
That shattered roof—this naked floor—
A table—a broken chair—
And a wall so blank, my shadow I thank
For sometimes falling there!

“Work—work—work!
From weary chime to chime,
Work—work—work,
As prisoners work for crime!
Band, and gusset, and seam,
Seam, and gusset, and band,
Till the heart is sick, and the brain benumbed,
As well as the weary hand.

“Work—work—work,
In the dull December light,
And work—work—work,
When the weather is warm and bright—
While underneath the eaves
The brooding swallows cling
As if to show me their sunny backs
And twit me with the spring.

“O! but to breathe the breath
Of the cowslip and primrose sweet—
With the sky above my head,
And the grass beneath my feet;
For only one short hour
To feel as I used to feel,
Before I knew the woes of want
And the walk that costs a meal!

“O! but for one short hour!
A respite however brief!
No blesse�d leisure for Love or hope,
But only time for grief!
A little weeping would ease my heart,
But in their briny bed
My tears must stop, for every drop
Hinders needle and thread!”

With fingers weary and worn,
With eyelids heavy and red,
A woman sat in unwomanly rags,
Plying her needle and thread—
Stitch! stitch! stitch!
In poverty, hunger, and dirt,
And still with a voice of dolorous pitch,—
Would that its tone could reach the Rich!—
She sang this “Song of the Shirt!”

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/song-shirt

Vladimir Mayakovsky 1925

Back Home

Source: The Bedbug and selected poetry, translated by Max Hayward and George Reavey. Meridian Books, New York, 1960;
Transcribed: by Mitch Abidor.

Thoughts, go your way home.
Embrace,
depths of the soul and the sea.
In my view,
it is
stupid
to be
always serene.
My cabin is the worst
of all cabins -
All night above me
Thuds a smithy of feet.
All night,
stirring the ceiling’s calm,
dancers stampede
to a moaning motif:
“Marquita,
Marquita,
Marquita my darling,
why won’t you,
Marquita,
why won’t you love me …”
But why
Should marquita love me?!
I have
no francs to spare.
And Marquita
(at the slightest wink!)
for a hundred francs
she’d be brought to your room.
The sum’s not large -
just live for show -
No,
you highbrow,
ruffling your matted hair,
you would thrust upon her
a sewing machine,
in stitches
scribbling
the silk of verse.
Proletarians
arrive at communism
from below -
by the low way of mines,
sickles,
and pitchforks -
But I,
from poetry’s skies,
plunge into communism,
because
without it
I feel no love.
Whether
I’m self-exiled
or sent to mamma -
the steel of words corrodes,
the brass of the brass tarnishes.
Why,
beneath foreign rains,
must I soak,
rot,
and rust?
Here I recline,
having gone oversea,
in my idleness
barely moving
my machine parts.
I myself
feel like a Soviet
factory,
manufacturing happiness.
I object
to being torn up,
like a flower of the fields,
after a long day’s work.
I want
the Gosplan to sweat
in debate,
assignning me
goals a year ahead.
I want
a commissar
with a decree
to lean over the thought of the age.
I want
the heart to earn
its love wage
at a specialist’s rate.
I want
the factory committee
to lock
My lips
when the work is done.
I want
the pen to be on a par
with the bayonet;
and Stalin
to deliver his Politbureau
reports
about verse in the making
as he would about pig iron
and the smelting of steel.
“That’s how it is,
the way it goes …
We’ve attained
the topmost level,
climbing from the workers’ bunks:
in the Union
of Republics
the understanding of verse
now tops
the prewar norm …”

https://www.marxists.org/subject/art/literature/mayakovsky/1925/back-home.htm