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Quote by Alice Oswald

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Memorial: An Excavation of the Iliad

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Author

Alice Oswald
Alice Oswald

Alice Oswald is a renowned British contemporary poet, born in 1966. Her poetry focuses on natural landscapes and delves into the relationship between humans and nature. Oswald's work is characterized by its unique style and concise language, which has won her a wide audience. more

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“Darko Cvijetić: Previše mi to, osam djevojčica ​ Croatian (Original) ​Svatko bi trebao nositi kosti onoga koga je ubio. Do svoje smrti. To je odlična kazna. ​Većina ne bi nosila ništa, ali netko bi imao vreću kostiju, a netko se ne bi mogao pomaknuti, od težine svoje hrpe kostiju. I svi te vide. ​Jedan nosi tri vreće, jedan šatorsko krilo puno kostiju. Kad si mogao ubiti – sad nosaj, neka svi vide, i da se što prije umoriš. Da vidiš kako je tuđe kosti nositi. ​Da od kremiranih pepeo nosiš. Puno je pepela jedno strijeljanje, recimo. Da opako težak ruksak nosaš na leđima, sve dok se i ti ne zagrobiš u zemlji. ​Darko Cvijetić: It's Too Much for Me, Eight Little Girls ​Everyone should carry the bones of those they killed. Until their death. That is a perfect punishment. ​Most would carry nothing, but someone would have a bag of bones, and someone wouldn't be able to move from the weight of their heap of bones. And everyone sees you. ​One carries three bags, another a tent sheet full of bones. If you were able to kill—now you carry them, let everyone see, and may you grow tired as soon as possible. So you see what it’s like to carry someone else's bones. ​To carry the ashes of the cremated. An execution, for example, is a lot of ash. To carry a wickedly heavy backpack on your back until you too are buried in the earth.”

War
Book:Previše mi to. Osam djevojčica
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“In time, there will be nothing particularly controversial about using these words to describe the things they were created to describe. (The very history of the word “genocide,” meant as a mechanic of forewarning rather than some after-the-fact resolution, is littered with instances of the world’s most powerful governments going to whatever lengths they can to avoid its usage, because usage is attached to obligation. It was never intended to be enough to simply call something genocide: one is required to act.) Once far enough removed, everyone will be properly aghast that any of this was allowed to happen. But for now, it’s just so much safer to look away, to keep one’s head down, periodically checking on the balance of polite society to see if it is not too troublesome yet to state what to the conscience was never unclear.”

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Book:One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
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“Instead, as the scope and scale of annihilation intensifies, an opposite presupposition becomes necessary, one that imposes onto the dead the appropriate mendacity to justify their killing. A few weeks in, the notion that Palestinians deserve to die because some of them voted for Hamas becomes insufficient to hold up the body count. Soon Palestinians become indistinguishable from Nazis, and then worse than Nazis. As their eradication continues, they must transform into the worst human beings on earth, the weight of their deaths only then sufficiently lightened.”

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Book:One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
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