Two Prisons and two warps in time

On my way to Babi Yar I met a man from Abu Graib. He was like me, but not like me, he was thin, and so was I, he had no hope and neither did I. He was the man on the road from Abu Graib and I was coming through him to my own prison.

I met a woman from Auschwitz on my way from Abu Graib, she was hungry and so was I, her child had died on the train, and she never made it to the gate to work and be free, she was from Auschwitz and so was I.

I met a child from Uganda, he had no hands and his brother had a gun. He was a prisoner of himself and I was walking in front of his jail.

We build so many jails, so many places to hide our crimes and our nightmares. We hide the truth and we hide from the truth, we are free and we are not. I met myself the other day, I was hanging a man by his thumbs in Guantanamo Bay, and I was being hung by my thumbs in Buenos Aires. The language can change, the meaning remains, the pain and the joy are mingled in the sweat of the beater drinking the blood of the beaten.

I think that I can no longer see myself in the prison mirrors of a tormented land.

I met a man from Birkenau, and he was on his way to Lubyanka after an hour or so on a gurney in San Quentin.

Only the dead meet themselves coming back, going home.

Comments

K.D. Keenan said…
Very moving, very sad. Sometimes i wonder why I got to live in such interesting times, and then I remember Gandalf: "So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."
9:10 AM
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