In Dark times there is also
Singing: about the dark times!²
Noises from the Depths
Become Voices when they find
In certain perforated surfaces:
The conditions of their articulation.³
Alas, what can Poetry possibly
Say about such destruction?
And yet poets Write …⁴
Let them not say: we did not hear.
Let them not say: we did not see—
We Hear, we See—we Tremble.
Let them not say: it was not spoken—
We Speak, we Witness with voice & hands:⁵
We give Testimony—
That no one may plead ignorance.⁶
In limning the horror, the degradation, & the filth—
We hold the Cracked Mirror up to humanity!⁷
If the horror of the world were the Truth of the world,
There would be no one to say it—and no one to say it to.⁸
There’s no poetry in the violence, the order of things—
But there is Poetry in what Life, what Beauty, we make from it!⁹
Here is, comrades, our pen—
And you can Write Yourself!¹⁰
¹ Walt Whitman, Song of Myself
² Bertolt Brecht, Motto
³ Gilles Deleuze tr. Lester & Stivale, The Simulacrum and Ancient Philosophy
⁴ Marilyn Chin, Introduction to The Girl Box Series & Little Girl Etudes
⁵ Carolyn Forché, Let Them Not Say
⁶ Denise Levertov, Gathered at the River
⁷ Leonard Baskin, Interview in Time Magazine, 1959
⁸ Robert Hass, Winged and Acid Dark
⁹ Heidi Andrea Restrepo Rhodes, Impossible Word
¹⁰ Vladimir Mayakovsky tr. Herschberger & Prychodko, A Talk With a Tax Collector