Saša Milivojev - WELTSCHMERZ - 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