(I stand on the balcony. At the church opposite, some immigrants are painting. They dress it in the costume of today to make it beautiful, but its soul is faded and colorless.The church resembles a beautiful castle, but time has eaten it from the inside. Gangrene has taken hold of its walls. It suffers from rheumatism, the damp has seeped into its very marrow. The edifice of the past is falling, though they try to prop it up on crutches. The old cannot be rejuvenated, it cannot give birth to the new, it is bound to fall. The scaffolding before me is a stage. It begins to sway, to shake. One of the unsecured immigrants loses his balance... The stage opens... The tragedy begins.)I saw him falling, I saw him!Like a meteor breaking away from the scaffoldingAs he drew away from the dome of the sky.With hands like roses,He had climbed to pick the fruits of the sun.The breeze came as a gentle puff from his mouth,Caressing the wings of the birdsSo they would soar high.To conquer the blue heights,To see the mountains, to kiss the stars.To greet the cloudsThat had taken to the sky like caravans of immigrants.To send a kiss to his mother,It was night when he left to seek the light.Her longing his companion and guard in the foreign land.Her photograph the most precious paintingIn the gallery of his soul.I saw him flying, I saw him!Reaching out for his friends, his countrymen,The boss, to hold the world in the lilies of his hands.I saw him ask the sun for help.He opened his eyes wide, to photographThe universe for the very last time.In that moment he wanted to gather to his chestHis daughter’s eyes, his wife’s heart, his mother’s kiss,The pines of his homeland.The spring beneath the roots of the fir tree,He had forgotten its face, its taste,The beauty of its murmurs,Under the gaze of the moon’s brow.Why did he want all these?Where did he want to take them?He was falling!Was he falling or was he rising?He was falling, to rise in a song.He was falling to riseOn the great pedestal of the suffering.The birds folded their wings, he closed his eyes.A moment, a flash,In his pupils remained the extinguished hope,The woven dreams.They appeared deep, deep down,In the corner of the eye socket that was drying up.To the sound of a distant bell,Ringing perhaps in another world.He was unable to explain it.Was he dreaming or was he seeing it?He had sought this bell of happiness for so many years.He had sought it among the fruits when he picked them,Amidst the concrete and mortar as he patched the holes in the walls,To patch the holes of poverty, which he never managed to close.He sought it among the colors of the paints when he painted.He did not know the color of life’s happinessAnd he will never learn it.The boss told him, it has the color of sweat,The shape of exhaustion when it covers the brow.Covered in both,He never felt happiness.He felt the bitter taste of bread, of words,The insulting glare of the eye behind sly eyelashes.Who could he trust, who?In the end he was convinced,It was hidden in the house of the sun.He raised the scaffolding and launched himself into the heights.He never harvested its taste and beauty,Neither his hand, nor his heart– a tree without fruit, without nests, without chirping.Every morning he unbuttoned his chest,Opened his arms to the world, and greeted:“Good morning, hope!”“Good morning, people!”“Good morning, Future!”Silence plunged like a knife into his ribs.Exhaustion and insult were other knives in his back.Nailed to the cross of suffering,He ran to find the light,Clenching hope in his small fists.Others designed roads.Roads of tomorrow.Roads named Life, Culture,They built iridescent, arched bridgesBeautiful brows over the banks, for him, without paths.A lifetime of giving, without getting an answer.He laid asphalt so the future could walk on itSo the modern medicines of the time could be transportedTo cure the disease that had conquered the globe,The hopeless disease of revengeThat he had inherited from his ancestors.To heal the word exile, longing.Without knowing if it would ever happen?He paved roads, he planted flowers.Thousands of passersby walked on the roads of his hands,On the dream of his friends - meadows in the eyes of children.Everyone hurries in silence, hunched under the weight.In their mouths a large, heavy padlock,Where loves, kisses, and thoughts are locked away.Only exhaustion has remained outside,It weighs heavily on their shoulders,On the shoulders of the nation,On the bleeding shoulders of the globe.He laid runways,So the iron messengers of the century could fly.So free thoughts could fly,Of the great European family.So songs could fly, to conquer the galaxies.So all the languages of the world would fade,And people would speak with their hearts,So weapons would be silenced, and feelings would bloom.So revenge and grudges would vanish like weeds.I saw him... yes, yes... I saw him.At that moment the traffic lights went out.People and vehicles lost their order of movement,Everyone was apologizing to each other, without knowing why!Television stations lost their picture.Radars absorbed undeciphered resonances.His fallRuined the balance of the world.The sun lost its gaze,It entered entirely into his eyes.It rushed to help him, to hold him up,But can its hands hold him alone,When the hands of others were pushing him down?Can he alone hold up the future?No, no, and again, no!His light is a lantern to illuminate the road,The road we take, where we walk.The future has no head,When it steps on their shoulders,To pave the way to the gold mine for itself.The building of the future cannot be raised,With the stones of pain.It cannot live long in happiness,Taking life from their lives,To make them rails for its locomotive of exploitation.Can this be called an era of prosperity?Yes, yes, I saw him!His shirt in the color of the trees,Opened up, took the shape of wings.The birds grabbed its corners to hold him up.He turned into a bird of prey,He shrieked with a cry,That came from the depths of his chest.Anger had taken over his whole being.He swooped down to strike, to snatch his victims,(In truth he was a victim of the times).He swooped down on the deaf ears of the globe,To eat the eyes of the employer,So others could see the cave of his chestAnd of his shattered friends,Their hopes and dreams ruined.He swooped down with predatory hatred,On the stone-crushing factory of daily wages,On the cable car that keeps connectedThe shores of inequality.I saw him,In the final moment, all the suffering, the insults,He wanted to take them for himself on the long journey,To leave the globe in peace,Without the deadly virus of hatred.I saw him, I saw that too!The pen fell from his daughter’s hand.It stuck and pinned the white sheetOf her dreams to the reading desk.Silence wounded everyone’s eyes,Exploitation wounded the blooming of their smiles,Lightning struck the road of the future.The love for knowledge wavered, faded.The bread remained bitten only once,Between it and the mouth,An abyss of sorrow was createdThat separates life from death.This bite, a strong toothIn the heart of injustice, insecurity, fear.Yes... yes... I saw him!His mother was hanging the washed sheets on the line,White as her innocence.They looked like flags waving for peace.That good woman, she shears the wool from the sheep,With the art of her knitting needles she clothes her grandchildren,She throws a blanket over the world to keep it warm.Her love knows no self-interest,It is like the steam of warm bread coming out of the oven,The same for everyone.Yes... yes... I saw those too!His wife’s tears with the weight of the globe,Rolling down the meadows of her cheeks.Two great avalanches breaking trees,Hearts, dreams, falling into the abyssThe endless and deep abyss of the soul.I saw her hands that rock the future,Trembling, sifting the flour of thought,To separate the truth from the dream.In these moments, She, wanted to be in a dream,In an eternal dream to forget the truth.Her tomorrow a broken hopeIn the hungry millstones of time.I saw him... yes... yes... I saw him!He did not speak, he clenched his hands into fists,He clenched his teeth,And launched himself toward the heart of the earth.He struck it with all the weight of his body,With all the weight of hatred gathered over 18 years,With his fingers joined like soldiers beside one another,Two fists in the shape of large spheres.Did he strike the globe to knock it from the sun’s orbit?Why did he strike its swollen belly?Did he strike so the other planets would hear?Or did he strike so a different wind would blow over it?He struck to wake it from its lethargic sleep,From its monotonous rotation.He struck to stop its rotation for a moment,Then, to begin another rotation,At a slower pace, not dizzying,Safer. He struck and fell silent, to leaveThe next rotation to the others.(I blinked my eyes. Instead of applause andmusic, shrieks, weeping. People rushing to consoleone another. Rushing to recognize the main actor. The curtaincloses, the tragedy ends. Other tragedies follow in the daysto come).
PILO ZYBA
