Flowers and trees and love and such
are ours to freely discuss,
are what is
allocated to us.
When we add a note
of concern or rage
at how each
is polluted or policed
or killed, they call us
out of line. Sometimes
they call us onto
a firing line of our very own —
enough, the Powers say,
enough, troublemakers;
you should have stuck to
writing of flowers and trees
and love and such
as they are and no more,
should never have sought or
assumed then proclaimed
connections to wider agonies
and grander ecstasies —
damn all you poets. Stick to
pretty wordcraft; leave
the statecraft to the State.
For us to be of
soothing voice and
half-sound mind
is all they ever ask
of us; anything we choose
to carry or inhabit or disrupt
beyond that,
any words for the choices
we fight for or against, anything
we choose the words to nurture,
is ours alone, and we are
too frequently alone
with language — the machine
that makes truth happen.
We can’t turn it off, even if we die
by its churning. We can’t do otherwise;
seasons, rain, flowers and trees
and love and such ask us to speak for them.
We can’t do other than we are asked.
Even if we die. Even if it kills us.
