The Pain of the World

Saša Milivojev WELTSCHMERZ ("WORLD PAIN") - THE PAIN OF THE WORLD In this century withal Rivers of blood still flow Bombs echo Children are being killed Heads are being severed Millions are starving Diseases are devouring And you are singing The gallows are trembling In the valley of the fallen In the salty tears With our putrescent sores We fall prey to the crows Our festering entrails For the starving wolves A shattered house Little boy is weeping Over the body of his Father That forever now is sleeping Schools Temples and bridges bleeding bloodstained wedding guests are screaming Little white coffins Maternal howls Above Uranus Hear the painful growls Delirious poets are prattling And not a word are you uttering They blinded you When they raped your daughter Strangled ‘er with the wire They abducted your brothers Tortured in the cellar Shattered their fingers With ferrous clubs With a saw agape their skulls Their legs wagons lacerated Their limbs with machete dissected Flayed the skin of their backs Dumpers of corpses Bulldozers to the grave consigned Roads run over their bones in cement confined Bodies filled the bottomless well over the brim Come closer Look within The infinite darkness of the abyss To hear the silence of the universe A spark is glistening in an innocent eye Children are helplessly falling to the dust Venomous saliva dripping from their mouth As their rosy intumescent faces bust In their closing prayer Reverends to a cross immured Laughing at the stake they burned Tender ivory cherubs Flew away like a flock of birds Rip my heart out from my chest As I am unsleeping May your golden ship catch wind away from shore To raise your glass of blood once more As you feast your eyes in silence Saša Milivojev Translated by Ljubica Yentl Tinska visit: www.sasamilivojev.com