Marge Piercy: The Low Road

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Category: Culture

Created on Thursday, 02 December 2010 09:47

Written by Marge Piercy

Thanks to Radical Eyes who writes:

"What is really powerful, and potentially useful about this poem in thinking about political demos, is the way it draws out the seeds of future radical change that are already percolating in the present. This too can be an important aspect of (effective) political demonstrations. Some sense of a future to affirm, not just a present to oppose (nor a past to nostalgically remember)."

The Low Road

by Marge Piercy

What can they do to you? Whatever they want. They can set you up, they can bust you, they can break your fingers, they can burn your brain with electricity, blur you with drugs till you can t walk, can’t remember, they can take your child, wall up your lover. They can do anything you can’t stop them from doing. How can you stop them? Alone, you can fight, you can refuse, you can take what revenge you can but they roll over you.

But two people fighting back to back can cut through a mob, a snake-dancing file can break a cordon, an army can meet an army.

Two people can keep each other sane, can give support, conviction, love, massage, hope, sex. Three people are a delegation, a committee, a wedge. With four you can play bridge and start an organisation. With six you can rent a whole house, eat pie for dinner with no seconds, and hold a fund raising party. A dozen make a demonstration. A hundred fill a hall. A thousand have solidarity and your own newsletter; ten thousand, power and your own paper; a hundred thousand, your own media; ten million, your own country.

It goes on one at a time, it starts when you care to act, it starts when you do it again after they said no, it starts when you say We and know who you mean, and each day you mean one more.