Poetic Obligation and Burden

Joseph Brodsky wrote that "If a poet has any obligation toward society, it is to write well. Being in the minority, he has no other choice. Failing this duty, he sinks into oblivion. Society, on the other hand, has no obligation toward the poet. A majority by definition, society thinks itself as having other options than reading verses, no matter how well written. Its failure to do so results in its sinking to the level of locution at which society falls easy prey to a demagogue or a tyrant. This is society's own equivalent of oblivion." and I think I might agree.

2034

The beginning of something I started writing... "I was born in 2034, the year the first anti-Islamism ban (as it came to be known) was passed. Although I don’t remember it, my parent assure me that the first few years of my life were spent shuffling between “holding centers” and “shipping centers”, between interrogation quarters and “insurgent” embassies. One “adoption and assimilation” agency suggested taking me from my parents, and though my mother had agreed for a few seconds, I was not taken in the end. My father had put his foot down, one of his very few moments of assertion, and my mother’s system had cleaned itself of any “influence” they had injected her with. These agencies were not very common, but we were lucky to have had neighbors who were a part of one. The only problem was: deny their services and you didn’t have any chance in hell at succor from anywhere else. You were roughed up then shipped “East”. Where you were shipped was not their problem. They just put you in the “general” area and then whoever could deal with you, dealt with you. Otherwise you either starved to death, or, seeing as you were starving to death, the local government in whose territory you were placed could either ship you to your own government (which rarely ever happened seeing as things were chaotic and very busy) or they would execute you." (Copyright The PDJ :D)