WHEN THEY COME
When they come for you,
and if you have heard
“because I was not”
anecdote
you can be sure they will
then you could do worse
than show them your poems,
the ones
that made your name, with
the exquisite emotional
control, resonant
exploration of self
they liked them then, and
perhaps
on their account, they will
make you an exception
though, in talking about your
situation, my friends and I
(writers as you know
of a very different
species of poetry) don’t
hold out much hope
unless you
can figure out that what
we were fighting against
then in words
and now
at the barricades
is exactly the thing that
suddenly has you numbered,
may be about
to leave you unwritten;
unwrite
your name
still
that soft pen and
throw your lot in with all
that writes in
fire, blood, rebellion
convert to the cause
it is now (as it always was)
the only
and now
last-remaining way.
