Socialist Sonnet No. 138

Barbarism or Socialism?

 

A hundred, more, gangs on Haiti shows,

Under idyllic Caribbean skies,

The true nature of raw free enterprise

Untroubled by any effective laws.

Wherever the market determines goods,

Drugs or guns or both? And then nothing stirs

Unless so willed by armed entrepreneurs

The poor look up to as their Robin Hoods.

While terror roams the streets in four by fours

The limits of government are revealed,

The power of profit’s no longer concealed,

As the powerless huddle beyond their doors.

Barbarism or Socialism? The voice

Of Red Rosa echoes still with that choice.

 

D. A.