(The only other language, in my humble opinion, that used poetry to rise above its station was German. My German was far worse than my English, but I knew a little bit, and I was a fan, like many Poles, of Goethe and Rilke. Still, I was unsure that a language that could order children to be mowed down by gunfire was still a sane one to use for poetry, and anyway, when comparing the two, I found English more pleasing to the ear.)
