Monday, March 29, 2021

The War on Books - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

The War on Books

 

The war on books, codified by Stalin’s functionaries

at the Soviet Writers’ Conference in 1934 and ruthlessly

waged by the secret police for the following fifty years,

was finally coming to an end, and Zhivago’s insurgent

guerrillas were winning.

 

-Duncan White, Cold Warriors:

 Writers Who Waged the Literary Cold war

 

What books will America purge this week -

What childhood adventures, what scholarly works

What entertainments of an idle hour

Will be forbidden to us in this Land of the Free?

 

We pray that nations blessed with liberty

Will smuggle books to us, stories and poems

With innocent ideas that give delight

And in their innocence threaten tyrants

 

What books will America purge this week –

And when did we become afraid of ideas?

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