The Regime by Vaclav Havel

This is my way of paying honor to Vaclav Havel, who died in 2011.

This is a little bit of an experiment. This wasn't originally written as poem, but rather was the last few lines in a paragraph in an essay called "The Power of the Powerless" written in 1978. But sometimes I see something or hear something and something on the inside says "Whoa, that's a poem!" That's what happened here.

Because the regime is held
Captive in its own lies,
It must falsify everything.

It falsifies the past.

It falsifies the present, and
it falsifies the future.

It falsifies statistics.

It pretends not to posess
an omnipotent and unprincipled
police apparatus.

It pretends to respect
human rights.

It pretends to persecute
no one.

It pretends to fear
nothing.

It pretends to pretend
nothing.