I didn't know him at all

I didn't know him at all.
Some friends told me
he had spent five years in prison
because of a strike
in nineteen sixty-three.

It was after a recital
permitted but censored,
as recitals were held
then in this country
which seems so indecisive.

We talked of so many things;
of what we had lived and what we will live,
of the wrong they have been doing to us,
of the little we have learned so far,
of the much we should already know.

I often remember
the words he said,
which only a few of us heard
among the laughter of friends,
words which I tell you now.
"If only the rich study,
only the rich will know;
they will trick us with anything:
pictures of tits,
photographed bums,
four solemn words
and a rigged football match."

I didn't know him at all.
Some friends told me
he had spent five years in prison
because of a strike
in nineteen sixty-three.