Translations by Terry Hodgson
On the Branches of the Willow Trees
And how could we sing
With an alien foot set on our hearts
Among the abandoned dead in the squares
on the ice-hard grass, listening to
the child's lament, the black cry of the mother
heading towards the son, crucified on
the telegraph pole? On the willow branches
Even our zithers (guitars) were hung,
Turning (swinging) slightly in the sad wind.
It is as when
in autumn
the leaves
cling to the trees.
©Terry Hodgson2020
Man of my Time
You are still he of the sling and stone
Man of my time. You were in the cockpit
Between malignant wings, meridians of death.
I have seen you in the tank of fire,
at the gallows, at the torturer's wheel.
I have seen you. It was you,
convinced of massacre by exact science,
without love, without Christ. You killed again,
as always, as the fathers killed, as they killed
the animals who saw them for the first time
And this blood smells as on the day
when one brother said to the other:
let us go to the fields. And that chill echo
leads finally to you, in your time of day.
Forget, O sons, the mists of blood,
arisen from the earth, forget the fathers.
Their tombs sink under ash,
the birds and the black winds cover their hearts.
©Terry Hodgson2020
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