"How Is This Poem by Nobel Laureate in Literature Czeslaw Milosz Relevant to The Democratic Party As It Currently Exists?" (originally posted May '08)

for Vast Left



A Task


In fear and trembling, I think I would fulfill my life

Only if I brought myself to make a public confession

Revealing a sham, my own and of my epoch:


We were permitted to shriek in the tongue of dwarfs and demons


But pure and generous words were forbidden

Under so stiff a penalty that whoever dared to pronounce one


Considered himself as a lost man.


. --Czeslaw Milosz