to keep an eye on this world and cry out like Cassandra

It is the poet’s responsibility to speak truth to power...

Responsibility

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 say

It 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 be
listened to this time.

LET GRACE PALEY INSPIRE YOUR CREATIVITY AND ACTIVISM IN 2017

"YOU HAVE TO MAKE MUSIC OF IT SOMEHOW."

New Yorker