FORGET, ADORNO

Kulturkritik findet sich der letzten Stufe der Dialektik von Kultur und Barbarei gegenüber: nach Auschwitz ein Gedicht zu schreiben, ist barbarisch, und das frißt auch die Erkenntnis an, die ausspricht, warum es unmöglich ward, heute Gedichte zu schreiben.

Theodor Adorno(1903-1969): Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft(1951)

Forget, Adorno -

after atrocities, after

the self- defleshing of humanity

we need poetry

to remember

what was before,

what was done

and what came afterwards;

the victims, alive;

the victims, dying;

the mass graves, the ovens,

the ash of humans raining from the sky;

the culprits, the killers, the collaborators,

those who gave commands, those who carried them out

and those who saw and did not act;

caught and punished, escaped, left unpunished,

happily living ever afterwards

with their conscience just another victim

in forgotten mass grave never opened -

we need poetry, we need

each art and craft of humanity

to remember, to tell and shout and cry and roar

- to stand against those who today

do the same, plan the same, praise the crimes

old or new or just stand silent,

hiding in their cloak of neutrality

in their gray zone, bipartisan

between those begging for their lives

and those who burn villages and babies alive.

We need poetry, we need humanity;

Adorno, after Auschwitz,

after everything we have done, suffered,

witnessed and opposed and allowed to happen,

we need poetry, each and every drop and inch of humanity

in our bodies, bones, blood and each decent thought in our brains,

each strand of empathy and solidarity running through our lives.

Adorno - we need poetry,

we need to be human

and we need poetry

to be human.

19.08.2018