Awaiting Year One (Magda Isanos) Poem by Paul Abucean

I am awaiting Year One.
When all the nations live in peace,
and all the senseless slaughters cease,
and tyranny is overrun.

My heart is whispering already:
'Forgive me, brother, for the pains
and for the sorrow that remains,
for all the ills by hatred fanned
across the land.
Forgive me, come, give me your hand.'

I bit the ground just as you did.
I whimpered too.
My dear ones lie below a lid.
Yours also do.
Our hearth was fireless, empty, cold.
The dawn was grim, the pain untold.
And all around, before, behind,
horizons fell and left us blind.

We fled past bounds, past mounts and rivers.
But none would give us colder shivers
than all those soldiers without name.
The panicked masses went and came,
and faceless crowds kept pulling back,
till there was no one to attack.
The rain of shells would kill and maim
infants and mothers, all the same.
Then came starvation. Fields were scorched.

And all the while, in sunny South,
with a havana in his mouth,
the plutocrat upon his yacht
was sipping his martini shot.
'How glorious this world indeed!
Stability is all we need! '
(No day goes by without such speeches
by our obligatory leeches.)

Wipe off your grudges. So will I.
We, brother, live under one sky.
You too make tools, and plough the land.
You read. You write. You understand.
We both come home to shabby shacks.
We toil away and break our backs,
yet end up falling through the cracks.

My brother, come. Together we
can right the wrongs of history.
Give me your hand. Come, leave your grave.
The sun is rising.

Magda Isanos (1944) (Translated by Paul Abucean)