THE PARTY WAS OVER THEN TOO

When I was about fifteen

I followed a beautiful girl

into the Communist Party of Canada.

There were secret meetings

and you got yelled at

if you were a minute late.

We studied the McCarran Act

passed by the stooges in Washington

and the Padlock Law

passed by their lackeys in colonized Quebec;

and they said nasty shit

about my family

and how we got our money.

They wanted to overthrow

the country that I loved

(and served, as a Sea Scout).

And even the good people

who wanted to change things,

they hated them too

and called them social fascists.

They had plans for criminals

like my uncles and aunties

and they even had plans

for my poor little mother

who had slipped out of Lithuania

with two frozen apples

and a bandana full of monopoly money.

They never let me get near the girl

and the girl never let me get near the girl.

She became more and more beautiful

until she married a lawyer

and became a social fascist herself

and very likely a criminal too.

But I admired the Communists

for their pig-headed devotion

to something absolutely wrong.

It was years before I found

something comparable for myself:

I joined a tiny band of steel-jawed zealots

who considered themselves

the Marines of the spiritual world.

It's just a matter of time:

We'll be landing this raft

on the Other Shore.

We'll be taking that beach

on the Other Shore.