UNISONActive is an unofficial blog produced by UNISON activists for UNISON activists. Bringing news, briefings and events from a progressive left perspective.

Sunday 1 September 2013

The Active Disconnected by Bertolt Brecht

The active disconnected, your great teachers

Worked out the structure of a community

Where man is not wolf to man

And discovered man's delight in eating his fill and having a 

                      roof over his head


And his wish to manage his own affairs

They did not believe the preachers' babble

That our terrible hunger will be appeased once our bellies

                      have rotted

They chucked out the dishes full of bad food.

They recognised the man they were told was the enemy

As their hungry neighbour.

They were patient only in the struggle against the oppressors

Tolerant only of those who would not tolerate exploitation

Tired only of injustice.

 

He who kicked away the chair on which he sat uncomfortably

Who drove the ploughshare an inch deeper into the earth than

                    any before him

The discontented man, he shall be our teacher

In reconstructing the community.

 

Those however

Who gorged themselves full on a plate of promises

Shall get their bellies ripped out.

Hiding their crooked bones

In a waste of a spoonful of sand.