Categories: PoetryPoliticsRattleBag and Rhubarb

Epitaph on a Tyrant

Antoine Pevsner Maquette of a Monument Symbolising the Liberation of the Spirit 1952

Epitaph on a Tyrant

Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.

by W. H. Auden

Free Speech 1940 Grace Golden (1904-1993) 1940

Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom 2000 Anselm Kiefer born 1945

Kosciusko (Illustration to ‘The Pleasures of Hope’) c.1835 Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851)

[no title] 1979-82 Jenny Holzer born 1950