and I am waiting

© Tereza Stehlikova

and I am waiting
for the green mornings to come again…
and I am waiting to write
the great indelible poem
and I am waiting
for the last long careless rapture…
and I am awaiting
perpetually and forever
a renaissance of wonder
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, ‘I Am Waiting’ (extracted), from A Coney Island of the Mind

“I take criticism so seriously as to believe that, even in the midst of a battle in which one is unmistakenly on one side against another, there should be criticism, because there must be critical consciousness if there are to be issues, problems, values, even lives to be fought for… Criticism must think of itself as life-enhancing and constitutively opposed to every form of tyranny, domination, and abuse; its social goals are noncoercive knowledge produced in the interests of human freedom.” – Edward Said (1935-2003), from The World, the Text and the Critic