Sitting here in my home,
That I am proud to own
I ponder on this thing called property,
This mine and yours
(Protected by the laws)
That makes you and me
Free.
Even the dog will defend his territory
And the wise will leave his manky old bone
Alone
For Fido’s teeth
Have brought many a man to grief.
Lock said that property rights are inate
And a man owns what he does create.
The state
Should expropriate
The capitalists Marxists said
(and marked the expropriation with the dead).
Ownership of property
Makes a man free
But what of those
Who have only the clothes
On there back
And lack
A stake in society?
If there number grows
They will trample on the toes
Of the rich
(and the comparatively so)
Many of whom I know
Would die in a ditch
To preserve their plot,
However fairly or ill got.
In my quiet
Study I enjoy
What the mob would destroy.
I remember riot
When people who little or nothing had
Went mad
And broken glass did greet
Me in the street.
As I sit here enjoying the silence,
In my flat overlooking the park, violence
Seems a distant prospect.
Yet those who have no stake
(And therefore feel no respect
For property,
That makes us free),
May one day take
Away my quiet
In riot.
K Morris - Poet 