I want to talk about Marx’s forehead,
not his forehead as such but the shine on it.
In even the crudest representations
it glimmers, like a perspiring lightbulb. Domed:

not like Lenin’s bony instrument — he, who

tiptoed round his own study not to disturb
himself writing revolutionary speeches.
The shine on Marx’s forehead turned

ideas into tombstones. Yet all the while —
before the shooting started and since —
the aborigine, with a single settled thought,
sniffed out water in some inhuman places.