Farewell, my bridegroom – I have never kissed you.
Farewell, my son – who never was.
Love brought me here and love will show me out…
In trembling hands the flutter of a captive morning gust.
But I will come again.
A thousand times.
Across the desert sand,
the rain-soaked clay,
the firesites, –
I will be back.
To bury brothers in the dead of night.
I will come barefoot.
I will be unarmed, with empty hands.
The law which calls me stands above all laws.
And if – they curse me,
or ignore me,
Or have their courts condemn me for the thousandth time, –
I shall not be condemned.
And I will come again
and haunt them
as I walk the battlefield at night –
This salty crust –
in which
I bury brothers –
black and white.
A tyrant’s shadow hovers heavy over land and sea
And names of slaves are scorched on our faces with the mark of shame, –
And thus – I must be back.
A thousand times.
To breathe the dark in which your body is enshrined.
To hold your helpless head.
To place the blade against your side.
Condemned a thousand times.
Your sister.
Your Antigone.
(Janina Degutyte)
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