I wanted to go away, in the midst of something entirely different

I have seen people being kicked, men’s bodies scorched | nails pulled out with pliers. | Armed with flame and cudgels, grinning men in shirt sleeves. | Where I could hear my friends being thrown headlong | down the stairs. | Night was as day, and long shrieks wounded me. | In vain I tried to think of wooded lanes and flowers | a serene life and human words. | The thought seized up, it was as if a wound were opened up | again and again and endlessly searched. | From the mouth struck, teeth and blood came out | and lamenting moans from the deep throat. | Away, away from that house, from that street and town | from anything similar to it. | I must save myself, keep up my mind | that I should not be led to madness by these memories. | Oh, if we could go back to a void, from which a new order | a maternal opening could come forth | if I hear a certain tone of voice even in jest, I shudder. | My unhappiness is that I avoid the sight of suffering | hospitals and prisons. | I have yearned for high solitudes, lands of still sunshine | and sweet shadows | but I would always be pursued by the ghosts of human beings. | All of a sudden I feel the need of distraction and play | to lose myself in the noise of the fairground. | I remain with you, but forgive me | if you see me sometimes act like a madman. | I try to heal myself by myself, as an animal | trusting that the wounds will close. | I stop to listen to the simple conversations of the women | in the marketplace, with their dialectical lilt. | I rejoice at the footsteps of running children | their overpowering calls. | Because you do not know the absurdity of my dreams | the fixed expressions, the incomprehensible gestures. | There is turmoil inside me, which seems to ridicule me. | And I cannot cry out, not to be like them. | Tomorrow I will go towards some music, now I am getting ready.