Page:Plunder (Perlman).djvu/36

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30

The punishment was nevertheless deserved.
Of Burumba, naturally, we need not speak.
He was a Red.
Yet do not think Moksa has been converted.

SCENE: INDIA

(A field. Moksa, a peasant, and Indio, his fifteen year old son, are stacking dry wheat.)

This backward infidel with his medieval outlook
Returned to India to farm.
His daughter visited and tried to reform him
--the same daughter who took refuge among you--
But with pitiful results.
He farms now, as you see, but do not be hoodwinked.
Stubborn Moksa still remains unreformed.
He has seen his ways discarded throughout the modern world.
Has seen his countrymen adjust.
He has felt the pangs of hunger, heard his family call
To support himself and his own;
To take his role seriously, to internalize the rules,
To earn, to save,
To cooperate in freedom, as you say.
He seems to farm now, but you'll quickly see
He does not take his role seriously.
In South Africa he saved,
But only, as you saw, to break away from his condition.
The purpose of his savings being beaten out,
He arrived in India with money.
He bought a small patch of land--a wise first move,
But, would you believe it, instead of providing for his own with the rest,
And in a land where all his neighbors were borrowing
--think of the rents, the debts, the interests!--
This unreformed medieval frittered it all away!