Poem: “Notes on the Capitalist Persuasion”

   I.
“Everything is connected to everything …”

–

So runs the executive saw,

cutting both ways

on the theme of all improvement:

Your string is my string

when I pull it my way.

–

In my detachment is your dependency.

–

In your small and backward nation

some minor wealth still beckons –

was it lumber, gas, or only sugar?

Thus by imperial logic,

with carefully aimed negotiation,

my increase is your poverty.

–

When the mortgage payments falter,

then in fair market exchange

your account is my account,

your savings become my bonus,

your home my house to sell.

–

In my approval is your dispossession.

   II.

Often in distress all social bonds

are broken. Your wife may then

be my wife, your children

my dependents – if i want them.

–

So, too, our intellectual custom:

Your ideas are my ideas

when I choose to take them.

Your book is my book,

your title mine to steal,

your poem mine to publish.

–

In my acclaim is your remaindering.

–

Suppose I sit in an oval office:

the public polls are sliding,

and to prove I am still in command

i begin a distant war. Then,

in obedience to reciprocal fate,

by which everything is connected,

my war is your war,

my adventure your misfortune.

–

As when the dead come home,

and we are still connected,

my truce is your surrender,

my triumph your despair.

–

“Notes on the Capitalist Persuasion” from For the Century’s End: Poems 1990-1999. Copyright © 2001 by John Haines. Reprinted with permission of University of Washington Press.