oil
with their rulers. The alleged inertia of labourers even to
the degree of their exploitation. And, yes, the alleged
superiority of any one system over another.

Of course reference would be made to the irony of Marx
being buried and remaining interred throughout the years in
one of the most class conscious nations on earth.

Where every accent and syllable decrees one's station in
life.

Where every utterance labels the speaker according to rank
and social standing by rigid calling.

I thought of myself discussing such things with the
perturbed, yet unmovable ideologues of the People's
Democratic Republic of China.

Did they know Marx's friend and colleague, Engels, kept a
mistress? Did they care that Marx disapproved?

Imagine using the word "grave" in the same breath as
"grave offence" to discuss incest. Glib moralizing, the
trumpet of the bourgeoisie! I seem to remember Lenin's
disdainful "no omelettes with first cracking the eggs."

Perhaps all communication is claptrap.

All these fellows wanted were directions.

Their minds were made up.

They were attending a secular church, walking in
the footsteps of an earthbound saint. No amount of revisionist
thinking could deflect, in their eyes, Marxian achievement.
And you had to give Marx certain dues. That before people
are capable of aspiring to work, they must first be fed. And
all contacts, within life, must inevitably come through and
be restricted by, how one has chosen to make that daily
bread. Or, in Marx's words, how one is prevented from
advancing by artificial class barriers. Precisely.

Poles apart. Worlds away.

The two Chinese chaps and I were living proof of that.

I wondered if they would have been interested in seeing the
Dicken's plaque nearby. The novelist, too, had stayed only
a street away. Little Dorritt would have been pleased even
if the jury is still out on which thinker alerted the world
most to the evils of uncontrolled profit.

I for one, care little for the revolutionary proletariat or
repudiated communist dogma but I do like to eat. Marx
made his point.

HARDCASES

I dreamed my toenails
were ivory
and elephants came to trade for tusks
... Then went conveniently off to die
("shed this mortal coil") in a
cutter-shed stacked high
like firewood.

II
I dreamed Landover, Maryland
was the site near the
P