What Are You Reading 2013 - Page 163

I come and stand at every door

But no one hears my silent tread

I knock and yet remain unseen

For I am dead, for I am dead.



I'm only seven although I died

In Hiroshima long ago

I'm seven now as I was then

When children die they do not grow.



My hair was scorched by swirling flame

My eyes grew dim, my eyes grew blind

Death came and turned my bones to dust

And that was scattered by the wind.



I need no fruit, I need no rice I

need no sweet, nor even bread

I ask for nothing for myself

For I am dead, for I am dead.



All that I ask is that for peace

You fight today, you fight today

So that the children of this world

May live and grow and laugh and play.

I
Living is no laughing matter:

you must live with great seriousness

like a squirrel, for example-

I mean without looking for something beyond and above living,

I mean living must be your whole occupation.

Living is no laughing matter:

you must take it seriously,

so much so and to such a degree

that, for example, your hands tied behind your back,

your back to the wall,

or else in a laboratory

in your white coat and safety glasses,

you can die for people-

even for people whose faces you've never seen,

even though you know living

is the most real, the most beautiful thing.

I mean, you must take living so seriously

that even at seventy, for example, you'll plant olive trees-

and not for your children, either,

but because although you fear death you don't believe it,

because living, I mean, weighs heavier.

II
Let's say you're seriously ill, need surgery -

which is to say we might not get

from the white table.

Even though it's impossible not to feel sad

about going a little too soon,

we'll still laugh at the jokes being told,

we'll look out the window to see it's raining,

or still wait anxiously

for the latest newscast ...

Let's say we're at the front-

for something worth fighting for, say.

There, in the first offensive, on that very day,

we might fall on our face, dead.

We'll know this with a curious anger,

but we'll still worry ourselves to death

about the outcome of the war, which could last years.

Let's say we're in prison

and close to fifty,

and we have eighteen more years, say,

before the iron doors will open.

We'll still live with the outside,

with its people and animals, struggle and wind-

I mean with the outside beyond the walls.

I mean, however and wherever we are,

we must live as if we will never die.

III
This earth will grow cold,

a star among stars

and one of the smallest,

a gilded mote on blue velvet-

I mean this, our great earth.

This earth will grow cold one day,

not like a block of ice

or a dead cloud even

but like an empty walnut it will roll along

in pitch-black space ...

You must grieve for this right now

-you have to feel this sorrow now-

for the world must be loved this much

if you're going to say "I lived" ...

February, 1948