To Fidel Castro @ 83

To Fidel Castro @ 83 (Free verse)
by AJ.Daggatolar





I

Fighting
Insidiously for the
Dictate of
Equality and
Liberty

II

Fidel,
For a new generation
Let me ask
What is the breeding creed for change
In an age
Where revolution is no more textual
Than a visual means for the mind
To seek new ways
T o the same old game of gambling
For more earnings in one’s own individual pocket?

Fidel
How is it that the Revolution
Can only be a question
Of skin deep or light
To have one who wears
The colour of an X-slave
Calling the shots in the master house

Will the stars now sprinkle less heat
And allow Cuban sugar to freely trade
Or would Miami now go less busy
On accounts of citizens with dual nationality
Who party in wait for your death
How they think everything is you
Even with Raul now in the saddle.

III

Life remains ever accidental
Cannot your type being anew
Is it that life has become a prisoner
Of dialectics unlocked
To service
Only outside history

50 years on
The rest of us are late comers
Conditions are changing
But not in the colour of blood
To undeny Darwin
In recognition of the human will
To live in want
How can these be a new rule to live by

Fidel…
The friends from Miami
Backed by the full weight of the US machine
Dole out doses of daily
Dozens of sabotage snatched
Down to distort the revolution
Every direction

The raids, the Escapades
Of canoes load of human cargoes
To such the sparks of the stars
For a new life ashore
Only to woo family members
With the luring scent of Dollarbills
To hook more innocent Cubans
To embrace the creed
Of unequal existence

For some others and the rest of us
We can go to Hell
Without a thought
Of how Capital comes about
In their new theory of boom
Only for the meltdown
To rush them back to study
The dumped and so called outdated
Pages of Marx -
“Capitalism is doomed to
a cyclic crises”

The cup is not passing OVER
The poor cannot go on
Being with us
The Revolution must be made
Try, they cannot unwrite HAVANA..1959
Even with their pigs at our Bay
We marched on in advance
Awaiting the Revolution
In other land to come to the aid of Cuba



IV

To the scarcity of want in abundance
From the abundance of want
How do we reach the new frontiers
And abode there permanently
If we don’t enrich our mind anew

Power alone can not
How many have come and gone
Trodding the same path
And every new time
Behind the back
And against the Bolshevism of 1917

Revolution suffered isolation
Only to have Stalin hack
For us all a new doctrine
‘Socialism in one country’
The guns in an upswing
Momentarily fed all full
The victory of a state of our own
Made all sacrifice possible
Against even the worst of odds
Illusion mounted a castle
The future was appropriated
Forever in the present

A caste freed from the
Burden of making a Revolution
Can only in turn enemy in practice
All serious attempt
In china, Germany, Spain
The list is endless
All through 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s
To authenticate their
Self preservationist theory
-‘We shall not rock any Other Boat
and just let us be in Moscow’
This philosophy gave Chang Kai-shek
Kuomintang the go ahead
April 12 1927 to commence
Shanghai massacre of workers

This is the making of Mao
The armed man
Against the classic read
Of workers’ resurrection
Drowned in blood
And from there down
It is being down down
Revolution it seems
Is only possible by the armed man
What other testimony
China 1949

V

Fidel…
What did you and others
Risk life and all for
For power and office
Can anyone be blind to the reforms
But Che hops on
To Congo, Algeria, Bolivia
In exploit of the armed man theory
And today his face is a brand
On shirts and tennis shoes
Worn by boys and girls alike
In the neo-colonial world
Who cannot spell Revolution
Even in their own lost mother tongue

50 years on…
Tell us
The world is still wrong
Where did we go wrong
The Revolution
Were we wrong in making it
Against the Blueprints of Marx
And the letters of Lenin
Or is it in the failure
Of others following
Our example against the Democracy
Of Workers

At 83 celebrating
Fidel’s life
The least to learn
Is the consistence of Capital
Unfailing to Dog US down
In boom or crisis
We betray the Revolution
If we turn only
Into ourselves