THE PAIN OF THE WORLD

Saša Milivojev

THE PAIN OF THE WORLD

WELTSCHMERZ

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

Translated by Ljubica Yentl Tinska

Copyright ©️ Saša Milivojev