This poem is taken from PN Review 167, Volume 32 Number 3, January - February 2006.

Being a Human Being

Tom Leonard

for Mordechai Vanunu

not to be complicit
not to accept everyone else is silent it must be all right

not to keep one's mouth shut to hold onto one's job
not to accept public language as cover and decoy

not to put friends and family before the rest of the world
not to say I am wrong when you know the government is wrong

not to be just a bought behaviour pattern
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