We are children of our age, <br />it's a political age. <br /> <br />All day long, all through the night, <br />all affairs--yours, ours, theirs-- <br />are political affairs. <br /> <br />Whether you like it or not, <br />your genes have a political past, <br />your skin, a political cast, <br />your eyes, a political slant. <br /> <br />Whatever you say reverberates, <br />whatever you don't say speaks for itself. <br />So either way you're talking politics. <br /> <br />Even when you take to the woods, <br />you're taking political steps <br />on political grounds. <br /> <br />Apolitical poems are also political, <br />and above us shines a moon <br />no longer purely lunar. <br />To be or not to be, that is the question. <br />And though it troubles the digestion <br />it's a question, as always, of politics. <br /> <br />To acquire a political meaning <br />you don't even have to be human. <br />Raw material will do, <br />or protein feed, or crude oil, <br /> <br />or a conference table whose shape <br />was quarreled over for months; <br />Should we arbitrate life and death <br />at a round table or a square one? <br /> <br />Meanwhile, people perished, <br />animals died, <br />houses burned, <br />and the fields ran wild <br />just as in times immemorial <br />and less political.<br /><br />Wislawa Szymborska<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/children-of-our-age/
