“It is impossible to communicate to people who have not experienced it the undefinable menace of total rationalism.”

“When, as my friend suggested, I stand before Zeus (whether I die naturally, or under sentence of History)I will repeat all this that I have written as my defense.Many people spend their entire lives collecting stamps or old coins, or growing tulips. I am sure that Zius will be merciful toward people who have given themselves entirely to these hobbies, even though they are only amusing and pointless diversions. I shall say to him : "It is not my fault that you made me a poet, and that you gave me the gift of seeing simultaneously what was happening in Omaha and Prague, in the Baltic states and on the shores of the Arctic Ocean.I felt that if I did not use that gift my poetry would be tasteless to me and fame detestable. Forgive me." And perhaps Zeus, who does not call stamp-collectors and tulip-growers silly, will forgive.”

“You who wronged a simple man Bursting into laughter at the crime, And kept a pack of fools around you To mix good and evil, to blur the line, Though everyone bowed down before you, Saying virtue and wisdom lit your way, Striking gold medals in your honor, Glad to have survived another day, Do not feel safe. The poet remembers. You can kill one, but another is born. The words are written down, the deed, the date. And you’d have done better with a winter dawn, A rope, and a branch bowed beneath your weight.”

“The living owe it to those who no longer can speak to tell their story for them.”

“Religion used to be the opium of the people. To those suffering humiliation, pain, illness, and serfdom, religion promised the reward of an after life. But now, we are witnessing a transformation, a true opium of the people is the belief in nothingness after death, the huge solace, the huge comfort of thinking that for our betrayals, our greed, our cowardice, our murders, we are not going to be judged.”

“And when people cease to believe that there is good and evil,Only beauty will call to them and save themSo that they will know how to say: this is true and that is false.”

“In Rome on the Campo dei FioriBaskets of olives and lemons,Cobbles spattered with wineAnd the wreckage of flowers.Vendors cover the trestlesWith rose-pink fish;Armfuls of dark grapesHeaped on peach-down.On this same squareThey burned Giordano Bruno.Henchmen kindled the pyreClose-pressed by the mob.Before the flames had diedThe taverns were full again,Baskets of olives and lemonsAgain on the vendors' shoulders.I thought of the Campo dei FioriIn Warsaw by the sky-carouselOne clear spring eveningTo the strains of a carnival tune.The bright melody drownedThe salvos from the ghetto wall,And couples were flyingHigh in the cloudless sky.At times wind from the burningWould drift dark kites alongAnd riders on the carouselCaught petals in midair.That same hot windBlew open the skirts of the girlsAnd the crowds were laughingOn that beautiful Warsaw Sunday.Someone will read as moralThat the people of Rome or WarsawHaggle, laugh, make loveAs they pass by martyrs' pyres.Someone else will readOf the passing of things human,Of the oblivionBorn before the flames have died.But that day I thought onlyOf the loneliness of the dying,Of how, when GiordanoClimbed to his burningThere were no wordsIn any human tongueTo be left for mankind,Mankind who live on.Already they were back at their wineOr peddled their white starfish,Baskets of olives and lemonsThey had shouldered to the fair,And he already distancedAs if centuries had passedWhile they paused just a momentFor his flying in the fire.Those dying here, the lonelyForgotten by the world,Our tongue becomes for themThe language of an ancient planet.Until, when all is legendAnd many years have passed,On a great Campo dei FioriRage will kindle at a poet's word.”