Poem by Pier Paolo Pasolini

Published october 21, 2005 18:04

For him who only knows your color, red flag,
you must really exist, so that he can exist:
he who was covered with scabs is covered with wounds,
the laborer becomes a beggar,
the Neapolitan a Calabrese, the Calabrese an African,
the illiterate a buffalo or dog.
He who hardly knows your color, red flag,
won't know you much longer, not even with his senses:
you who already boast so many bourgeois
working-class glories,
you become a rag again, and the poorest wave you.