Friday 27 December 2013

Your death will serve as warning


1
Lovely world of cottages
Of mines and fields

2
Faces good in firelight good in frost
Refusing the night the wounds and blows

3
Faces good for everything
Now the void fixes you
Your death will serve as warning

4
Death the heart turned over

5
They made you pay your bread
Sky earth water sleep
And the misery
of your life

6
They said they wanted intelligence
They measured the strong judged the mad
Handed out alms split a cent in two
They greeted the corpses
They were polite

7
They persevere overdo they are not of our world

8
Women children keep the same treasure
Green springtime leaves and pure milk
Endurance
In their pure eyes

9
Women children keep the same treasure
In their eyes
Men defend them as they can

10
Women children keep the same red roses
In their eyes
They show their blood

11
Fear and courage to live and die
Death so hard and so simple

12
Men for whom this treasure was sung
Men for whom this treasure was wrecked

13
True men for whom despair
Nourishes hope’s devouring ardour
Let us open the future’s last bud

14
Pariahs the death earth and ugliness
Of our enemies have a colour
Grim as our night
We shall win out

 Victory of Guernica
by Paul Eluard

Gernika, Sarajevo, Afghanistan, Libya, Algeria, Cambodia, Vietnam, Gaza, Jerusalem,... Syria, Sudan, Central African Republic, Congo, Irak,... the people!


Saturday 14 December 2013

Les choses, George Perec

I recommend this book by the French writer George Perec (available in Spanish, in English,..).

Although the title says "a story of the sixties", I think this book is also about today in the "developed world", the "first world".