It is the responsibility of society to let the poet be a poet
It is the responsibility of the poet to be a woman
It is the responsibility of the poet to stand on street corners
                     giving out poems and beautifully written leaflets
                     also leaflets they can hardly bear to look at
                     because of the screaming rhetoric
It is the responsibility of the poet to be lazy
                    to hang out and prophesy
It is the responsibility of the poet not to pay war taxes
It is the responsibility of the poet to go in and out of ivory
                     towers and two-room apartments on Avenue C
                     and buckwheat fields and army camps
It is the responsibility of the male poet to be a woman
It is the responsibility of the female poet to be a woman
It is the poet's responsibility to speak truth to power as the
                     Quakers say
It is the poet's responsibility to learn the truth from the
                     powerless
It is the responsibility of the poet to say many times: there is no
                     freedom without justice and this means economic
                     justice and love justice
It is the responsibility of the poet to sing this in all the original
                     and traditional tunes of singing and telling poems
It is the responsibility of the poet to listen to gossip and pass it
                     on in the way storytellers decant the story of life
There is no freedom without fear and bravery     there is no
                     freedom unless
                     earth and air and water continue and children
                     also continue
It is the responsibility of the poet to be a woman     to keep an eye on
                     this world and cry out like Cassandra, but be
                     listened to this time.