The Soldier In Exile

Sometimes I wish I should return, throw this body to the ground before the judges installed in all the marketplaces of my country, and tell them, come, hang it on your gallows of prefabricated words. Sometimes I wish I should stop hiding among rocks, and feeding on the sunlight and on the wind, sail across the ocean's nights and days. I would then unload all my bones into the arms of the soil smiling at my homecoming and tell it I have no further part in its future. I however hesitate. The shores of my country would be inaccessible with stones dislodged by vengeance and counter-vengeance and with putrid weeds of mangled interpretations, all its green and proud forests would have been burnt by loud proclamations of conquests that never occurred, its body bleeding, its railways and roadways and harbours shattered, encampments of imported mercenaries all along the banks of its moist eyes. All this notwithstanding, I sometimes wish I should return, but some other times I do not wish I should return. Sometimes it seems all my love is a moon rising every evening and setting every dawn in the sky above wherever I exist. Sometimes, however, I wish I should return. [Translated by the poet]