82 lines
3.3 KiB
Markdown
82 lines
3.3 KiB
Markdown
By Carlos Bulosan
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If you want to know what we are who inhabit
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forest mountain rivershore, who harness
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beast, living steel, martial music (that classless
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language of the heart), who celebrate labour,
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wisdom of the mind, peace of the blood;
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If you want to know what we are who become
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animate at the rain’s metallic ring, the stone’s
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accumulated strength, who tremble in the wind’s
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blossoming (that enervates earth’s potentialities),
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who stir just as flowers unfold to the sun;
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If you want to know what we are who grow
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powerful and deathless in countless counterparts,
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each part pregnant with hope, each hope supreme,
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each supremacy classless, each classlessness
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nourished by unlimited splendor of comradeship;
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We are multitudes the world over, millions everywhere;
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in violent factories, sordid tenements, crowded cities;
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in skies and seas and rivers, in lands everywhere;
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our number increase as the wide world revolves
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and increases arrogance, hunger disease and death.
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We are the men and women reading books, searching
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in the pages of history for the lost word, the key
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to the mystery of living peace, imperishable joy;
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we are factory hands field hands mill hand everywhere,
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molding creating building structures, forging ahead,
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Reaching for the future, nourished in the heart;
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we are doctors scientists chemists discovering,
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eliminating disease and hunger and antagonisms;
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we are soldiers navy-men citizens guarding
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the imperishable will of man to live in grandeur,
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We are the living dream of dead men everywhere,
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the unquenchable truth that class-memories create
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to stagger the infamous world with prophecies
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of unlimited happiness - a deathless humanity;
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we are the living and the dead men everywhere….
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If you want to know what we are, observe
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the bloody club smashing heads, the bayonet
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penetrating hallowed breasts, giving no mercy; watch the
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bullet crashing upon armorless citizens;
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look at the tear-gas choking the weakened lung.
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If you want to know what we are, see the lynch
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trees blossoming, the hysterical mob rioting;
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remember the prisoner beaten by detectives to confess
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a crime he did not commit because he was honest,
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and who stood alone before a rabid jury of ten men,
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And who was sentenced to hang by a judge
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whose bourgeois arrogance betrayed the office
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he claimed his own; name the marked man,
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the violator of secrets; observe the banker,
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the gangster, the mobsters who kill and go free;
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We are the sufferers who suffer for natural love
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of man for man, who commemorate the humanities
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of every man; we are the toilers who toil
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to make the starved earth a place of abundance
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who transform abundance into deathless fragrance.
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We are the desires of anonymous men everywhere,
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who impregnate the wide earth’s lustrous wealth
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with a gleaming fluorescence; we are the new thoughts
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and the new foundations, the new verdure of the mind;
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we are the new hope new joy life everywhere.
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We are the vision and the star, the quietus of pain;
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we are the terminals of inquisition, the hiatuses
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of a new crusade; we are the subterranean subways
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of suffering; we are the will of dignities;
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we are the living testament of a flowering race.
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If you want to know what we are
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WE ARE REVOLUTION! |