A Child is Not a Knife

Last day in the month of March/ Snow falls over/speckled ground, settles/ on the branches of the small cherry tree/ From the trunk of the pine/ lichens glow   Under the snow, under the ground/ is the clear, dark/ transparent water/ I see a forest, broad-leaved, moisture/ drifting over half over-/grown temple buildings   The sun's/ sign, yellow   A green bird/ and a blue bird, conversing/ On the ground, ashes, gray    Black/ remains of some undetermined/ substance    The soldiers are far away/ History's leaves grow quickly    The plague/ get here late, quickly lungs/ bled, disintegrated   Villages/ not yet emptied/ for work on cocoa plantations/ Jesus became God of the sun/ Now, once again, the tower/of dead grows   The period/ about four hundered years  The killing/ takes new forms    New religions, a new/ salvation   Every day the sun rises/ The soldiers of the empire at their outposts/ in the central killing     Calling forth/ the other empire's growing shadows    Here too/ clear as glasss, with genuine existance/ Death's dominions penetrate one another/ Snow falls deeper and deeper, perishes    The war/ goes on, it has gone on a long time now   We/ are his hostages, its profiteers   The names/also come back    Guatemala, 1954/ Guatemala, 1983   Honduras    Nicaragua, the same year/ El Salvador, 1932   Now we're led/ back four hundred years   The numbers of dead/ are also high now that it is not even/ possible to implement exploitation/ at full capacity   The names of the empires change/ our names change   The child's wing of genocide/ grazing your cheek   In ultimate caress/ A child is not a nife   No labyrinth's web/ is opening  The man-eating monster is/ real    And no pushing it aside, no taking sides,/ can dispel that    The marches, the cries,/ringing like the voices of birds, in very grave distress/ Echoing in the kingdom of death    Solidarity of the birds in Hades/ There may not be any other   We still live the attempt/ There is no reason for us to stop/ Hope and despair are interchangeable categories/ Who seeks consolation in either of theses has already given up/ Those people who fight for their lives, also/ in great confusion, can do nothing else   For/ them nothing exists but freedom's constraint   For some/ it is murder, which damms them as humans/ No one is without guilt   We ourselves, the doomed are/ singing   Now light's pitch rises   The human voice is alone.