The Poison of Poetry

Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling. Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty, and then we shall fill you with ourselves. ~1984 by George Orwell, published June 8, 1949 Who is that standing under the mountaintop; could it be the shadow of The Old Poet, and is it speaking The Poet's verses nonstop in voices young and old as if Thou Knowest the depth of my soul and the words it would drop into the valley of voracious locust; the poems devoured by its mindless minions, spewed like poison in their vast pavilion?