When the regime ordered that books with harmful knowledge
Should be publicly burnt, and all around
Oxen were forced to drag cartloads of books
To the pyre, one banished poet
One of the best, discovered, studying the list of the
burnt
To his horror, that his books
Had been forgotten. He hurried to his desk
On wings of rage and wrote a letter to the powers
that be.
Burn me! he wrote, his pen flying, burn me!
Don't do this to me! Don't pass me over! Have I not
always told
The truth in my books? And now
I am treated by you as a liar!
I order you:
Burn me!
[Bertolt Brecht {1898-1956} 'The Book Burnings' {trans. by Tom Kuhn}, in Books and Libraries, from Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets]
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