on the way home?
Soft darkness was just settling on the grass,
a velvet drizzle,
and under my feet the brittle leaves
Tossed sleeplessly and moaned like
beaten children.
Stealthy shrubs were squatting in a circle
on the city's outskirts.
The autumn wind cautiously stumbled among them.
the cool moist soil
looked with suspicion at the streetlamps;
a wild duck woke clucking in a pond
as I walked by.
I was thinking that anyone could attack me
in that lonely place.
Suddenly a man appeared,
but walked on.
I watched him go. He could have robbed me,
Since I wasn't in the mood for self-defence.
I felt crippled.
They can tap all my telephone calls
(when, why, to whom.)
They have a file on my dreams and plans
and on those who read them.
And who knows when they'll find
sufficient reason to dig up the files
that violate my rights.
In this country, fragile villages
- where my mother was born -
have fallen from the tree of living rights
like these leaves
and when full-grown misery treads on them
a small noise reports their misfortune
as they're crushed alive.
This is not the order I dreamed of. My soul
is not at home here
in a world where the insidious
vegetate easier,
among people who dread to choose
and tell lies with averted eyes
and feast when someone dies.
This is not how I imaged order.
Even though
I was beaten as a small child, mostly
For no reason,
I would have jumped at a single kind word.
I knew my mother and my kin were far,
these people were strangers.
Now I have grown up. There is more and more
foreign matter in my teeth,
Like the death in my heart. But I still have rights
until I fall apart
into dust and soul, and now that I've grown up
my skin is not so precious that I should put up
with the loss of my freedom.
My leader is in my heart. We are
men, not beasts,
We have minds. While our hearts ripen desires,
they cannot be kept in files.
Come, freedom! Give birth to a new order,
teach me with good words and let me play,
your beautiful serene son.
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