lauantai 15. marraskuuta 2025

DO WE NEED TO LIKE THE POET TO LIKE THEIR POEMS?

Do we need to like poets
to like their poems?

Art lives independent
of its creator,

many would say,
but that's like claiming

that wars exist separetely
from the rulers who start them,

or that the fire started
by an arsonist flickers independent,

that the abandoned child
found and abandoned again

by a famous poet on his
northward journey

exists separate
from those who abandoned them.

No man is an island,
remember? So how could

poem be considered separate
from the mind that crafted it,

anymore than a bomb dropped
on a United Nations school

turned shelter for refugees
can be considered separate

from the pilot who dropped it,
from the commander who gave the order

or the ruling politician
who ordered the genocide?

Artists are responsible,
even if they don't change

brush to Zyklon-B,
poems are chained

to those who begetted
and birthed them

by unbreakable link of steel,
until time erases all memory

of the bard who slouched
out of Stratford-upon-Avon

the song is crucified
to the troubadour.

15.11.2025

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