“So this was my punishment, to be a wet nurse for astillborn freedom.”
And so we returned to the promise that was never given,returned with our hands in shackles and our pockets filledwith poems.
We sifted through the language of hunger devouring thewords, bread, and cabbage, shuffling our feet in long linesand around clerks who remained motionless.
Wherever we walked we searched for a grave: as someonesaid, “You entered the desert searching for sand.”
Then the silence came and we were invalids unable tomove in the world. The hours wasted away.We waited for aknock on the door, for my heart to stop or insanity tosully my verse.
Every night we heard the pounding of nails. They werebuilding our future. And like all condemned people wewitnessed the construction of our death.
