GRAMSCI'S HAIR

Il Duce was too soft
and let you live

so your hair survived
the damp cells of Ustica and Turi
where you wrote a way out for the comrades
from the ruins of their revolution

I saw you in that photo
on a tutor’s wall
from before those prison days
hair thick and black
you in your neat commissar’s outfit

now every student reading Dante
inhales your spores
and can spell the word hegemony

after prison I see it was a simple suit your wore
like any old bourgeois citizen
and your face had grown fat
though your hair was still black
if not so voluminous

you didn’t live long enough to see
Il Duce, bald and bloody,
strung up like a bulbous spider 

that hegemonic bastard, death,
did for both of you, hair or no hair

-Michael Blackburn

Michael Blackburn is a veteran of ancient poetry wars.