Mountain slopes – amphitheatre, soldier – grey actor,
decoration – cliffs and smoke, olive trees and blood poppies.
We walk, dark wanderers, across life’s crumbling bridges
hungering for freedom and fortune like a pauper for his daily bread.
In Maioli are blood and death, Maioli blooms with poppies.
The poppies are red as blood, with blood blossom the hills and fields.
Long lines of corpses: in this common place of rest lie
an Englishman, Frenchman, Italian, Indian, Greek and Pole.
(Those who fell forgot the war and know nothing,
are lucky not to hear a moaning friend, the crashing of shells,
Cairo, Mass Albanetta, San Angelo, Monte Cassino –
died for them like dreams, as they themselves).
Bridges down, the markerless roads on which we march
to Rome burst into rubble, smoke and dust
choke the nightingale’s song and the flowering cherry orchards.
Friend, luckless as I, don’t kneel or drop on the road
even though weariness buckles your legs and the black nights fall.
We do not need cantatas or hymns, pathos or lies,
death and life are simple. We could wait no longer,
our vagabond fate no longer dear. We need another end
for night’s Pompeii! We came here not to live but die,
we carry the lava of the war Vesuvius onto tank and gun.
In Maioli are blood and death, Maioli blooms with poppies.
With blood red as poppies we write the strange history
and in our dreams of freedom shout: liberta vedi e muori!
(Juozas Kekstas)
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Based on Topics: Life Poems, Night Poems, Death & Dying Poems, War & Peace Poems, Dreams Poems, Friendship Poems, Lies & Deceit Poems, Liberty & Freedom Poems, Soldiers Poems, Movies Poems, Performance Arts PoemsBased on Keywords: decoration, vesuvius, amphitheatre, pompeii, vedi, cassino, liberta