Poet Power

"The exile of a poet, is today a simple function of a relatively recent discovery; that whoever wields power is also able to control language, and not only with the prohibition of censorship, but also by changing the meaning of words." Czeslaw Milosz, from Nobel Lecture

I cried today when I read those words. Remembered tears. I remember how I cried decades ago when I read the poetry of Anna Akhmatova and read about her life. Not because of the horrors she lived through: because elsewhere there exist countries where poets have such power that they are imprisoned.