Skamplet på Kina – forsøg på engelsk version

Stigma on China

 

Of course it is important to keep calm.

I have to experience excitements

But should not let them flood the brain.

 

Excitements have their own logic,

And so I am urged to address

The personified Great Power:

 

 “Listen China, get a translator,

So that you can understand what I am saying.

 

Your overwhelming population doesn’t justify

Genocide or the killing of a culture.

 

Tibet is a culture of its own,

And your technique of extermination shall blemish

All the culture of China  

From now on and several thousands of years backwards.

 

You can’t save yourself even though

The USA exterminated the culture of the red Indians,

The Romans scattered the Jews

And the Germans gassed them.

Not to mention the forced union of Soviet.

 

I have to consider

Whether I shall stop entering notes

On this papers in a Chinese note-book.

I wonder what is invisible on the blank pages   

Of legal hanky-panky and forgery with history      

When you deny Tibet the right of independence

And religious liberty.   

 

Shame on China!

As long as Tibet is invaded and maltreated!”

 

Maybe China, then, tells us

That every culture is so stained.

 

When the poet rambled on about a peach branch

And a dickey-bird hidden among the leaves,

His assistant, the politician, went to work       

With sword and torture.

 

What, then, about the peoples’ cry for justice?

 

Shall the dark clouds never 

Be replaced by a brisk wind?         

                   

©  Per-Olof Johansson, DK

ps: ..efter længere tids arbejde på en engelsk version af dette digt, havde jeg bare lyst til at se det i luften

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