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The ice is there —
It has to be to write;
A legislating sliver in the heart,
Obliged to share
A vent of irksome light,
A dart to spark the fire of passion’s art.
Words, to be sure,
Are nothing to the ice,
Our hieroglyphics neither burn nor grieve,
Sublime, piss-poor,
We pay a poet’s price:
And end as we began — dead men on leave.
‘Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.’
— Percy Bysshe Shelley, ‘A Defence of Poetry’ (1812)
‘We Communists are all dead men on leave.’
Eugen Leviné’s speech to the Court in June 1919 at his trial for high
treason in Munich. He was found guilty and executed by firing squad.
