Branko Miljkovic - While you sing

Who's going to be carrying your burden while you sing?

While you remain the only one to spite the poverty of clarity.

Met with the scathing fruit, and the mocking dew,

who's going to be carrying your burden while you sing?

Sing, travel, spite around, your song is the only thing that yearns for you,

and the night is proud of you...

But who's going to be carrying your burden while you sing?

Interpretation: Branko Miljkovic would often break the fourth wall in his poems, making it clear to the reader that he is but a man who turned to poetry hoping to heal a heart broken since birth, just like all poets are. This song reads as a hypothetical question he poses to himself. While singing (a verb that he uses as meaning "to write poems"), he takes the weight of his worries from his back and puts it on paper, freeing himself. But he is not wrong to wonder - if he gets too caught up in his writing, and lets it become his ultimate escape from the real world, then isn't that even worse than facing his problems? In the end, this poem offers no answer to his question, but a sharp reader's eye still finds one: you can only create new problems if you run from all your recent ones. The goal in writing poetry is to lessen the burden, not to forget it. We must face all of our problems: but we must, of course, do it delightfully. In a way, this is what Pink Floyd's 1979 concept album "The Wall" talks about. You can't hide behind the wall forever: it's bound to have a crack or two...