Your hands: dignified as stones,
sad as songs sung in prison,
clumsy and heavy as beasts of burden,
your hands like the cross faces of hungry children.
Light and nimble as bees,
heavy as milk-laden breasts,
brave as nature,
your hands hiding their friendly softness under their skin,
soft in friendship.
This world does not depend on ox horns,
your hands hold up the world.
Mankind, oh my people,
they feed you on lies.
Although you’re hungry
and in need of feeding with meat and bread,
not having eaten your fill even once from a white tablecloth
you flee like refugees from this world
where every branch bears fruit.
Mankind, oh my people,
Asians, Africans,
Near Easterners, Middle Easterners, Pacific Islanders
and my fellow countrymen,
that is more than seventy percent of all people:
like your hands you’re old, absent-minded,
like your hands you’re curious, enthusiastic, young.
Mankind, oh my people,
my Europeans, my Americans,
like your hands you are wide awake, bold and forgetful,
like your hands you’re quick to be conned,
easily taken in.
Mankind, oh my people,
if the radio tells lies,
if the press tells lies,
if books tell lies,
if posters on the walls, ads in the columns tell lies,
if the naked calves of girls on the white screen tell lies,
if prayers tell lies,
if lullabies tell lies,
if dreams tell lies,
if the violin player at the tavern tells lies,
if the moonlight of nights’ hopeless days tells lies,
if the word tells lies,
if colour tells lies,
if the voice tells lies,
if everyone and everything you lived by
apart from your hands
tell lies,
it’s so that your hands may be as malleable as moist clay,
your hands be blind as darkness,
your hands be dumb as sheepdog,
so that your hands may not make revolution.
It’s so that in this life and death world,
where we are guests for so little time
this empire of grasping and oppression should not end!
Ursprungligen från 1949