A Short History of Communism and the Enigma of Surplus Value
My grandfather on his Allis Chalmers WC tractor, a natural Communist
who hated Communism, is an example of Marx’s proletariat,
though nothing near in his own mind what Marx meant by the masses—
musing in his messianic beard, Marx intuited the enigma
of surplus value that my grandfather understood
from a cutter bar and threshing drum driving into the future
as the combine harvester, thus increasing the bushels
he could harvest each hour, thus increasing his hourly productivity
for each minute expended of muscle foot pound power—
but Marx didn’t foresee, exactly, that the tractor
would develop into a techno Taj Majal, complete
with safety glass cab, filtered AC, a surround sound system
that could rival Carnegie Hall or blast Led Zeppelin
at decibels that left your ears dazed, easily drowning out
the invincible tractor’s roar—and the hydraulics, so swift
you could lift the discs with a touch—and all this,
in the old man’s mind, contrasting with the tractor
he put me on to learn, a four stroke with a crank you had to turn,
cursing and turning until it shook itself and shook itself
like a drunk with the DTs, until clearing the mystification
of its hallucinated roles, the tractor refused to sing the song
of its own reification and hiccuped and lurched into the real.
I’d climb onto the iron seat with a threadbare pad
that made my ass sweat, a jug of iced tea wrapped in burlap,
a bandana knotted to keep dust out of my mouth, goggles
snapped onto my face like an ideologue’s dream so that I saw
the fields foursquare as I contour-plowed acre after acre
unfolding before me with such dialectical rigor
that the ground of being would hold still forever, never blowing
into reactions of horizon-shrouding dust whipped by the hot winds of contingency.
Such a theory Marx made to argue the enigma into sense—
and not just for himself but for the eponymous masses!
But my grandfather’s big nose and wary drinker’s eyes keep breaking through
the mask and posing an alternative enigma: what if his surplus value
led him not to solidarity with the worker but made him into a Kulak
who must be killed? So the locomotive pulls out
of the Finland Station, so the colors red and white
make uniforms for themselves: Lenin. Trotsky.
Moth-eaten Czar Nicholas. Technicolor Rasputin.
The ones who stood in front of Kresty Prison
for three hundred hours. But the colors saw them coming—
and wore the ones who wore them to rags.
But fast forward a hundred years, my grandfather dead for fifty,
and there, in a window on Fifth Avenue, the enigma
hides itself in the headless, sexless torso of a mannequin
as a fly lands on its finger, the window shattering
to a thousand windows in the lenses of its eyes.
And all the while the enigma, like the embalmed body of Lenin,
keeps on breathing through his waxworks face.
The Parallel Cathedral
1
The cathedral being built
around our split level house was so airy, it stretched
so high it was like a cloud of granite
and marble light the house rose up inside.
At the time I didn’t notice masons laying courses
of stone ascending, flying buttresses
pushing back forces that would have crushed our flimsy wooden beams.
But the hammering and singing of the guilds went on
outside my hearing, the lancets’ stained glass
telling how a tree rose up from Jesse’s loins whose
flower was Jesus staring longhaired from our bathroom wall
where I wanted to ask if this was how he looked for real,
slender, neurasthenic, itching for privacy
as the work went on century after century.
2
Fog in cherry trees, deer strapped
to bumpers, fresh snow marked
by dog piss shining frozen in the day made
a parallel cathedral unseen but intuited
by eyes that took it in and went on to the next
thing and the next as if unbuilding
a cathedral was the work
that really mattered—not knocking
it down, which was
My grandfather on his Allis Chalmers WC tractor, a natural Communist
who hated Communism, is an example of Marx’s proletariat,
though nothing near in his own mind what Marx meant by the masses—
musing in his messianic beard, Marx intuited the enigma
of surplus value that my grandfather understood
from a cutter bar and threshing drum driving into the future
as the combine harvester, thus increasing the bushels
he could harvest each hour, thus increasing his hourly productivity
for each minute expended of muscle foot pound power—
but Marx didn’t foresee, exactly, that the tractor
would develop into a techno Taj Majal, complete
with safety glass cab, filtered AC, a surround sound system
that could rival Carnegie Hall or blast Led Zeppelin
at decibels that left your ears dazed, easily drowning out
the invincible tractor’s roar—and the hydraulics, so swift
you could lift the discs with a touch—and all this,
in the old man’s mind, contrasting with the tractor
he put me on to learn, a four stroke with a crank you had to turn,
cursing and turning until it shook itself and shook itself
like a drunk with the DTs, until clearing the mystification
of its hallucinated roles, the tractor refused to sing the song
of its own reification and hiccuped and lurched into the real.
I’d climb onto the iron seat with a threadbare pad
that made my ass sweat, a jug of iced tea wrapped in burlap,
a bandana knotted to keep dust out of my mouth, goggles
snapped onto my face like an ideologue’s dream so that I saw
the fields foursquare as I contour-plowed acre after acre
unfolding before me with such dialectical rigor
that the ground of being would hold still forever, never blowing
into reactions of horizon-shrouding dust whipped by the hot winds of contingency.
Such a theory Marx made to argue the enigma into sense—
and not just for himself but for the eponymous masses!
But my grandfather’s big nose and wary drinker’s eyes keep breaking through
the mask and posing an alternative enigma: what if his surplus value
led him not to solidarity with the worker but made him into a Kulak
who must be killed? So the locomotive pulls out
of the Finland Station, so the colors red and white
make uniforms for themselves: Lenin. Trotsky.
Moth-eaten Czar Nicholas. Technicolor Rasputin.
The ones who stood in front of Kresty Prison
for three hundred hours. But the colors saw them coming—
and wore the ones who wore them to rags.
But fast forward a hundred years, my grandfather dead for fifty,
and there, in a window on Fifth Avenue, the enigma
hides itself in the headless, sexless torso of a mannequin
as a fly lands on its finger, the window shattering
to a thousand windows in the lenses of its eyes.
And all the while the enigma, like the embalmed body of Lenin,
keeps on breathing through his waxworks face.
The Parallel Cathedral
1
The cathedral being built
around our split level house was so airy, it stretched
so high it was like a cloud of granite
and marble light the house rose up inside.
At the time I didn’t notice masons laying courses
of stone ascending, flying buttresses
pushing back forces that would have crushed our flimsy wooden beams.
But the hammering and singing of the guilds went on
outside my hearing, the lancets’ stained glass
telling how a tree rose up from Jesse’s loins whose
flower was Jesus staring longhaired from our bathroom wall
where I wanted to ask if this was how he looked for real,
slender, neurasthenic, itching for privacy
as the work went on century after century.
2
Fog in cherry trees, deer strapped
to bumpers, fresh snow marked
by dog piss shining frozen in the day made
a parallel cathedral unseen but intuited
by eyes that took it in and went on to the next
thing and the next as if unbuilding
a cathedral was the work
that really mattered—not knocking
it down, which was
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