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Responsibility
The following poem was published at Democracy Now, and is the work of Grace Paley, who was the poet laureate of both New York and Vermont. I am copy and pasting here, instead of linking, because I really really really think it should be read. So, once again, this poem was published elsewhere on the internet and is the writing of one Grace Paley.
It is the responsibility of society to let the poet be a poet
It is the responsibility of the poet to be a woman
It is the responsibility of the poet to stand on street corners
giving out poems and beautifully written leaflets
also leaflets you can hardly bear to look at
because of the screaming rhetoric
It is the responsibility of the poet to be lazy to hang out and prophesy
It is the responsibility of the poet not to pay war taxes
It is the responsibility of the poet to go in and out of ivory
towers and two-room apartments on Avenue C
and buckwheat fields and army camps
It is the responsibility of the male poet to be a woman
It is the responsibility of the female poet to be a woman
It is the poet’s responsibility to speak truth to power as the Quakers sayIt is the poet’s responsibility to learn the truth from the powerless
It is the responsibility of the poet to say many times: there is no freedom without justice and this means economic justice and love justice
It is the responsibility of the poet to sing this in all the original and traditional tunes of singing and telling poems
It is the responsibility of the poet to listen to gossip and pass it on in the way storytellers decant the story of life
There is no freedom without fear and bravery there is no freedom unless
earth and air and water continue and children
also continue
It is the responsibility of the poet to be a woman to keep an eye on
this world and cry out like Cassandra, but belistened to this time.
