SINCE I WAS THROWN INSIDE
Since I was thrown inside
the earth has gone around the sun ten times.
If you ask it : "Not worth mentioning
a microscopic scan."
If you ask me : "Ten years of my life."
I had a pencil
the year I was thrown inside.
I used it up after a week of writing. If you ask it :
"A whole lifetime."
If you ask me :
"What's a week."
Since I've been inside
Osman did his seven-and-a-half
for manslaughter and left,
knocked around on the outside for a while,
then landed back inside for smuggling,
served six months, and got out again;
yesterday we had a letter - he's married,
with a kid coming in the spring.
They're ten years old now
the children who were born
the year I was thrown inside.
And that year's foals, shaky on their spindly long legs,
have been wide-rumped, contented mares for some time.
But the olive seedlings are still saplings,
still children.
New squares have opened in my far off city
since I was thrown inside.
And my family now lives
in a house I haven't seen
on a street I don't know.
Bread was like cotton, soft and white,
the year I was thrown inside. Then it was rationed,
and here inside men killed each other
over black loaves the size of fists.
Now it's free again
but dark and tasteless.
The year I was thrown inside
the SECOND hadn't started yet.
The ovens at Dachau hadn't been lit,
nor the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
Time flowed like blood from a child's slit throat.
Then that chapter was officially closed.
Now the American dollar talks of a THIRD.
Still, the day has gotten lighter
since I was thrown inside.
And "At the edge of darkness,
pushing against the earth with their heavy hands,
THEY've risen up" halfway.
Since I was thrown inside
the earth has gone around the sun ten times.
And I repeat once more with the same passion
what I wrote about THEM
the year I was thrown inside :
"They who are numberless
like ants in the earth,
fish in the sea,
birds in the air,
who are cowardly, brave,
ignorant, wise,
and childlike,
and who destroy
and create,
my songs tell only of their adventures."
And anything else,
such as my ten years here,
is just so much talk.
1947
ofelia "Ahmet's Ofelia" Confused
- 16 years, 11 months, 1 day ago
