Classic Poem

My father recommended safety
fearing to contradict law and order
he memorized the legal code, advised me:
if you're wise, stay out of politics

But how crowded courts and prisons have become
how gallows have swung, bullets whined
how much blood shed, enveloped castles of anger and mutiny
down through the ages!

How this question turns colorless, emptied of meaning
whether I dream or wake?
How the silence that reigns behind numb curtains
slips away in the absence, pierces walls
and becomes tablets of wrath? How such curtains reveal
voices spreading on flame to bring us to the massacres of history?

How can we sit on chairs, strapped down by advice
recommending safe submission?
How return?
Without taking action
words lie dead on library shelves
canned in manuscripts, newspapers, books