Ode to Anarres
After The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin

To break off from the homeworld,

Separate and start anew,

Takes courage nigh unknowable.

Make a new language, speak it;

Choose a harsher planet, keep it;

Dispossess yourself of things

And your only home alike;

Leave the old lush rainforests

For frigid deserts, dry, starving,

Where through hardship you are free.

Hold utopia in your heart

As you build the practical.

Make the would-be bureaucrats

Upon the Sister World be

As healthy cells within us,

Within the Social Organism:

Be free, O mighty nuchnib,

Do not let power concentrate!

Bring down the walls of the Port,

Let knowledge flow with lawless ease!

Love the Other as you love

Your syndics, with great compassion.

Open wide the many doors,

Burn down the borders, Land and space,

Live the harder, better life:

Freedom and Solidarity.

Byron López Ellington is a 17-year-old mestizo writer and anarchist. He is the founder and editor of the anarchist literary magazine Rulerless (rulerless.org). On Instagram @byronymous