Know your glory, your achievement

Know your glory, your achievement

[Spoken Word]

It would seem to me that, however arrogant this may sound,

I want to suggest two propositions.

The first one is that the poets, by which I mean all artists

Are finally the only people who know the truth about us

Soldiers don’t

Statesmen don’t

Priests don’t

Union leaders don’t

Only the poets

Know your glory, your achievement

Know your glory, your achievement

[Spoken Word]

What it’s like to fear, what it’s like to love

What it’s like to be glad

Hymns don’t do this, churches really cannot do it

The trouble is that although the artist can do it

The price that he has to pay himself, and that you the audience must also pay

is a willingness to give up everything

To realize that although you spent twenty-seven years acquiring this house,

this furniture, this position;

although you spent forty years raising this child, these children

Nothing, none of it belongs to you

You can only have it by letting it go

You can only take if you are prepared to give, and giving is not an investment

It is not a day at the bargain counter

It is a total risk of everything

of you and who you think you are, who you think you’d like to be

Where you think you’d like to go

Know your glory, your achievement