The Unanswerable?

Just two lines in capital letters, explicitly labeled “Question” and “Answer”: The Unanswerable? is the shortest poem in The Rose That Grew from Concrete. It consists of only a question and an answer, appearing in the book’s fourth part, “Liberty Needs Glasses”, among the political poems.

Peace only when the earth falls to pieces

The question is among humanity’s oldest: When will there be peace on earth? The answer comes immediately and without comfort: when the earth falls to pieces. In English, the poem carries a pun that can hardly be translated into other languages: “peace” and “pieces” sound almost identical. Peace and ruin are brought so close together that one appears to be the condition of the other.

The title anticipates the punchline while calling it into question at the same time. The question is considered “unanswerable,” and yet the poem offers an answer: one that cannot really be an answer. The question mark in the title, printed that way in the book, leaves open whether Tupac meant the answer seriously or as a provocation.

Not a doomsday fantasy, but the reckoning of a nineteen-year-old

In the context of the book’s section, the poem reads less like a doomsday fantasy than a reckoning. The neighboring poems deal with racism, police brutality, and political prisoners, such as How Can We Be Free and Liberty Needs Glasses. Anyone who has witnessed that, the logic goes, no longer believes in peace under the existing conditions.

Shortly before it stands And 2morrow, which bets on a better day despite everything: Tupac deliberately places despair and hope side by side. However, this connection arises solely from the arrangement in the book; Tupac provided no explanation for it.

When the poem was written is not documented; according to the preface, the poems date from the years 1989 to 1991. Even back then, Tupac answered the question of peace without any comfort.

More about the book and all poems in the introduction.