Revolutionaries, 1929

Revolutionaries [Alois Lindner, Erich Mühsam, Guido Kopp], 1929 by August Sander Twelve years on, the beard that Lenin wore Still sharpens revolutionary chins To dagger-points held ready for the war In which the outgunned proletarians Will triumph thanks to these, their generals, Whose rounded shoulders and round glasses say That sedentary intellectuals Raised in the bosom of the bourgeoisie Can also learn to work — if not with hands, Then with the liberated consciousness That shrinks from nothing since it understands What’s coming has to come. The monuments To which the future genuflects will bear These faces, so intelligently stern, Under whose revolutionary stare Everything that is burnable must burn.