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There Must Be Poetry After Chelmno, Treblinka, Belzec

If there is no poetry, they win.

If there is no poetry, if there is no art, no laughter, no music, no touch, no whispers of love—then their necroaddiction does not just end with them. It infects the world forever.

Adorno’s Warning, and the Answer to It

"To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric."

But he didn’t mean that poetry is impossible—he meant that poetry after Auschwitz must be transformed. It cannot be naïve. It cannot pretend as if nothing happened.

And yet—poetry still happened.

• Celan wrote.
• Różewicz wrote.
• Auschwitz survivors wrote lullabies for their children.
• Primo Levi wrote, even when he could barely hold a pen.
• The Warsaw Ghetto had poets. The Vilna partisans sang before battle.
• There were songs in the death camps.

Poetry After Genocide is Not a Luxury, It is Resistance

• There must be poetry after the Final Solution, because otherwise the only voices left are the murderers.
• There must be poetry after Guantánamo, because otherwise the torture becomes the only text.
• There must be poetry after Gaza, after Sudan, after every burning place on earth.

The necroaddicts want us to believe that nothing is possible after them.

That is their final lie.

The poetry must be written not because it makes things better—but because it proves they did not succeed in erasing the future.

There Must Be Poetry After Chelmno, Treblinka, Belzec

Because if there isn’t, the silence becomes the only monument.