DRY RIVERS

Rivers are dehydrated like
The skin on the faces of desert travelers
And the mighty Rhine and the beautiful blue Danube
Rivers are dry as a dry cough
Like the heels of a stubborn earthworker
They thirst, they grieve like mothers who lose
A child from their lap when it slips away irretrievably

From the bed of secrets, the bones of
Unknown drowned people and mammoth tusks
And the skeleton of some overloaded Hungarian ship have risen...
Will my bones ever come out
To the eyes of the sky-bent, to the surprised eyes of
Amazed unknown civilizations
I don't want some future Earthlings
To examine them with perfected technology
And determine their age like the female primitive man
of the future human species

When the river of our lives dries up, 
will the secret skeletons of selfishness surface on our faces 
The hidden life of greed overshadowed by the skins of external brilliance

Return to the water into your streams
Flow gently and undulatingly and comfortingly
Free me from sad thoughts
Of the devastated Earth and the dried-up Euphrates
Of the terrible steps of the apocalypse