"Into the grave!" - or - "Up, and march at once!" - are the sole options. Choices can’t be fewer. We are condemned to live in a numb trance: we’re chained to this numb trance, safe and secure.                 Weak sacrificial pawns, we’re shut by fear: our souls have frozen, our bodies have gone numb; opprobrium grins gleeful mocking sneers through the windshield of life, as a vile bum. Oh only if these shackles we could break! - we would get all of those who did twist us, who were so shrewd to chain us, who could make us fettered to this mired, slimed existence. We’re hoping... what for? Why are we craven? Or are these chains too hard for us to crack? Why are we knocking on the Gates of Heaven? With bleeding knuckles, we still knock and knock... We’ve given up - we had to quit all strives. The price jacked up, and it’s too late to reason: from now on, we’re sentenced to long lives in vile disgrace - it’s either shame or prison!         Well, we are not cheap slime! Looks are deceiving: caught in this swamp, we do refuse to thrive - we won’t succumb to agonizing living, we’d die, but - through that death - we’ll come alive!
© Anna Kapellan. Translation, 2018