"Carol Emshwiller - Acceptance Speech" - читать интересную книгу автора (Emshwiller Carol)

Joy. I had never heard, among your poets, of a poet ever called Joy, and I have
since learned that that is true, there are none, which is odd, for it seems to
me that the joy when the sound of the whip comes snapping over your head is as
much as any joy I've experienced here on your world, because when the blows fall
upon your back it makes an entirely different sound. One would think it would
have been written about, and often, but I suppose that's not your way.

I was left alone with these new things long enough to think about them, which I
did. Then other poets from the palace came and dressed me in them.

"There is no future for you, Joy, nor any future for any of us, in a land where
the president who is known as Uncertainties exists at the same time as you do.
Now Joy must put an end to him."

I asked them the same question I'd asked him and that he would never answer: Why
had I been raised up so high among them, from speck to where I was? They said it
was not only because my curls were tight and tiny and stuck out around my face
like a great amphitheater, but also because I had brought unusual and important
things to poetry. "It would be a pity for poetry if your syllables were
stopped," they said, "so be vigilant."

They belted my dagger about me, they coiled my whip over my shoulder, and led me
to the arena, a place where I'd only heard poetry before, though I'd often
wondered at the brown stains on the far wall. When I'd asked about them, you'd
always answered that they were the stains of bad poems.

The fight, you told me, was to be fought to the sound of our poems, so that I
and the president must never stop talking and never stop fighting. Also we must
never turn our backs or grovel as that would change death to non-death for no
one could kill a groveler. Then, if I had killed him, I was to put my ear on the
ground and grovel one last time which would be the last forever. If the
president, on the other hand, killed me, he'd not have to do that, having
already, when he'd won and become the president, come to his last grovel.

You poets of the palace were to be our audience, and you sat on the tiers with
your tablets on your laps, ready to write out the poems we would be saying to
each other. Those in red robes were to be for me. Those in green were for he who
had taught me everything I knew, who had nursed me, waited on me, drunk wine
with me, and once gave me a handful of jade marbles.

"It's possible to win with the poetry," you told me, "and yet still die."

I wasn't one of you and I didn't fight as you were used to. I threw off my whip
at once, for I wasn't good at it and didn't want the added weight. I took out my
dagger right away, and you all made great barking sounds I had not heard you
ever make before, though you said to each other that what I did was not against
any of the rules. There was no rule about it because no one had thought to do
that.

The president, Noble-Master, turned me and twirled me and forced me back with