I Feel Everything (for Rosa Luxemburg)

 

 

I feel everything

even despair
and when you are numb to it all
when color does not reach you
I feel that too
and history
I drag it with me through my days
like so much death
the millions of corpses, the countless stolen
by war and greed

or else it carries me
it runs with me weightless
like the people when they love
when they dream
when color fills them and they are strong
when they at last own history
and they are free

and only in art can that live
can I live
only in art can I breathe
even if choked with tears
even in the polluted air
no politics or business can hold me
that which decides for people their lives
you will live or die
you will starve because you can
because we can
turn away, because there is a profit to be made

I feel everything
I live in that
I live in art and history
                                      not art as artifice
                                      not history as the deadened past 

but art as breath
and history as the heart of the people
that chooses to beat
another day
another day
another day.




For Rosa Luxemburg