Communism and Capitalism

The author of Das Kapital came of the stock of Abraham, that is to say, that prophet who knew not Gabriel;

since truth was implicit even within his error his heart believed, though his brain was an infidel.

The Westerners have lost the vision of heaven, they go hunting for the pure spirit in the belly.

The pure soul takes not colour and scent from the body, and Communism has nothing to do save with the body.

The religion of that prophet who knew not truth is founded upon equality of the belly;

the abode of fraternity being in the heart, its roots are in the heart, not in water and clay.

Capitalism too is a fattening of the body, its unenlightened bosom houses no heart;

like the bee that pastures upon the flower it overpasses the petal, and carries off the honey,

yet stalk and leaf, colour and scent all make up the rose for whose selfsame beauty the nightingale laments.

Surpass the talisman, the scent and colour, bid farewell to the form, gaze only upon the meaning.

Though it is difficult to descry the inward death, call not that a rose which in truth is clay.

The soul of both is impatient and intolerant, both of them know not God, and deceive mankind.

One lives by production, the other by taxation and man is a glass caught between these two stones.

The one puts to rout science, religion, art, the other robs body of soul, the hand of bread.

I have perceived both drowned in water and clay, both bodily burnished, but utterly dark of heart.

Life means a passionate burning, an urge to make, to cast in the dead clay of the seed of a heart!