by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
I am sitting in Mike’s Place trying to figure out
what’s going to happen
without Fidel Castro
Among the salami sandwiches and spittoons
I see no solution
It’s going to be a tragedy
I see no way out
among the admen and slumming models
and the brilliant snooping columnists
who are qualified to call Castro psychotic
because they no doubt are doctors
and have examined him personally
and are also qualified to call him Communist
with a capital C
because they know the difference between Soviet Communism
(which put the “slave” back in Slavic)
and socialism with a small c
and also know a paranoid hysterical tyrant when they see one
because they have it on first hand
from personal observation by the CIA
and the great disinterested news services
And Hearst is dead but his great Cuban wire still stands:
“You get the pictures, I’ll make the War”
I see no answer
I see no way out
among the paisanos playing pool
it looks like Curtains for Fidel
They’re going to fix his wagon
in the course of human events. . . .
He goes on. He documents his bona fides as someone living a “real” life in a big city, where violence happens. He mentions he is reading Camus. It is all very dramatic, this is the shit, man, this is the shit, man. I know they are going to kill this great man, who has a Beat beard, man, they are going to kill him. No way out. No way out.
I have a bad habit of pointing out the obvious. This, itself, is perhaps an example. However, I will allow myself to comment that everything that was said about Castro, everything that was feared, was amply validated. It is like some magical spell was cast on Cuba the moment the Devolution [by the way, I do think we should start speaking of Communist take-overs as either coups–which is usually the most accurate term, where they get support from people who just want freedom long enough to overthrow someone, and who then seize power from within that group, and then throw all their old allies in jail or shoot them–or as Devolutions] hit peak tyranny, and time stopped. Nothing new happened. Nothing new was allowed. It was like a Twilight Zone episode, where the sun stopped in place, the birds stopped singing, the insects stopped buzzing, and whatever people were doing at the moment they continued doing forever. The country was frozen in amber.
This is how Cuba has long felt to me. Periodically they drag someone off and throw them in a dog cage for a year. Periodically a Party leader rapes some attractive girl or boy, but mostly nothing changes. Everyone is on edge. Everyone is afraid to move too suddenly, speak too loudly, or to think at all. It is much like the place portrayed in Madeline L’Engle’s “Wrinkle in Time”, where It ruled, with It standing in symbolically–so I have long assumed–for Communism. The Party motto is “Be Afraid. Be VERY Afraid.”
I will note the petulant, borderline childish resentment and sarcasm there. That tone is everywhere. One sees it ubiquitously on the internet. “Oh, I am SURE YOU know what you are talking about, Mr. Smart Guy.” It is the anger of someone who is physically and emotionally weak.
And I will note that he said socialism small c. He might as well have said, as those who are au courant presently are saying, it’s DEMOCRAT Socialism. I in fact thought that was what he said, on first reading. It fits so perfectly. And he did say small c. That was not a typo. communism, rather than Communism. That was what he stood for, communism.
Could he not have written this same poem about Huge Chavez? Is there any doubt he would have been a fervent Bernie supporter?
What has changed in 60 years? He was wrong then. His descendants are wrong now.