I have lived through destiny pulling on the reins
Victories and defeats, revolutions and restorations,
Inflations and deflations, bombardments,
Defamations, regime changes and burst pipes,
Hunger and cold, camp and solitary confinement.
Through all of this I have passed,
And all has passed through me.
I know the many forms of terror,
Terror from above and terror from below,
Terror on land and terror from the air,
Terror legal and extralegal,
Brown, red, and checkered terror,
And the worst, which no one dares to name.
I know them all and I know their grip.
I know the megaphones of power and of law,
The amplifiers and meaning distorters of the regime,
The blacklists with many names,
And the card files of the persecutors.
What should I now sing? The hymn Placebo?
Should I unproblematically envy the plants and the animals?
Quake in panic in the circle of Panists?
In the bliss of the midge that bobs in?
Three times have I sat in the belly of the fish.
I looked in the eye death at the hands of the hangman.
Yet the word of sybilline poets surrounded me protectively
And a saint from the East redemptively opened the door for me.
Son of this consecration, shiver not—
Hark and suffer!
June 11, 1948
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