ROOTS (weekly poem)

From the September 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Okay you Smiths, Joneses, Bloggs and Leeses

I bet your roots go back as far as the Breezes.

Right! There's me, a wage slave, and also me dad,

And me dead and buried grandfather, and none of us mad.

Further back than that I'm unable to go

But I'll bet a pound to a penny we were all pretty low.

Perhaps I'm Spanish or German or Welsh

But the truth of it is I'll never know.

And what do I care? Not such a lot.

Apart from a purely academical point of view

The best I can say is it's all so much rot.

Now don't get me wrong, don't twist what I say,

We're here 'cos of history and that's how it'll stay

But let's get it straight, put it all nice and clear,

The past is the past, but it's the present that's here.

Right! Stop looking back with your complacent shrugs

And clinging to tradition with your endearing hugs.

Wake up to the present, take a cold look around,

Observe the ness that should be razed to the ground.

Pull up the rotten capitalist roots,

Jerk them, yank them free.

Pick up your spades, exercise your brain

And help to plant the Socialist Tree.

Paul Breeze