Let them not say: we did not see it.
We saw.
Let them not say: we did not hear it.
We heard.
Let them not say: they did not taste it.
We ate, we trembled.
Let them not say: it was not spoken, not written.
We spoke,
we witnessed with voices and hands.
Let them not say: they did nothing.
We did not-enough.
Let them say, as they must say something:
A kerosene beauty.
It burned.
Let them say we warmed ourselves by it,
read by its light, praised,
and it burned.
2017
Regular
Contemporary
2025
Agency
Politics
Science & Climate
Anaphora
a figure of speech in which words repeat at the beginning of successive clauses, phrases, or sentences
Caesura
a break between words within a metrical foot
Couplets
two lines of verse, usually in the same meter and joined by rhyme, that form a unit
Epistrophe
the repetition of a word or phrase at the end of successive clauses
Hyperbaton
An inversion of typical syntax (word order).
Repetition
a recurrence of the same word or phrase two or more times