Life Tastes of Pepper

Life Tastes of Pepper

For so long now

life

on our tongues

has tasted of pepper;

it is bitter

and it burns.

You

plucked our young

before

their season of ripening,

and still

into our mothers' wounds

you scatter pepper

and ask:

‘What wounds?’

Did you not see the tears

upon their cheeks?

Or did you see,

yet the smiles

upon your lips

never turned to stone?

You said:

it was not there,

it did not happen,

we saw nothing…

But the image remains;

clearer than your denial,

as though

the sky

itself

had painted

on the wall of night

that image.

Go

and see the graves:

beautiful flowers,

on severed stems,

flowers torn apart

on the earth above the young

who still

carry the scent of life.

How sorrowfully beautiful it is there;

a place where

tears and smiles,

dancing and mourning,

memory and death

are woven together.

A mother

at her child's grave

lays down flowers,

a friend laughs

so that their tears

will not be seen,

and someone young

beside a cold stone

dances softly;

as though death

had been unable

to bring life

to an end.

For what sin

did you pluck these flowers?

You

who mistook the scythe

for

justice,

did you never read

the fate of the executioners

who came before you?

History

is not a closed book;

it is a mirror

that sooner or later

before every bloodstained hand

is held.

On that day

there will be

no time left for denial.

Time

does not always knock;

sometimes

it simply passes

and closes the door

behind

it.

And we

on the other side of the mirror

will stand,

not for revenge,

but to see the day

when everyone

must answer

for what

they have sown.

A flower

can be torn apart,

but spring

cannot be killed.