We would have gone on building these lands As God wanted in his Babylonian dream Water and prayers rippling over the steps of its hanging gardens But they destroyed us Built a prison from our dried blood And called it a homeland Then said: be grateful for your country
- Adnan Al-Sayegh -
Iraqi poet, born in 1955, sentenced to death in 1996 for his poem 'Uruk's Anthem', lives in London.
I am the people—the mob—the crowd—the mass. Do you know that all the great work of the world is done through me? I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the world’s food and clothes. I am the audience that witnesses history. The Napoleons come from me and the Lincolns. They die. And then I send forth more Napoleons and Lincolns. I am the seed ground. I am a prairie that will stand for much plowing. Terrible storms pass over me. I forget. The best of me is sucked out and wasted. I forget. Everything but Death comes to me and makes me work and give up what I have. And I forget. Sometimes I growl, shake myself and spatter a few red drops for history to remember. Then—I forget. When I, the People, learn to remember, when I, the People, use the lessons of yesterday and no longer forget who robbed me last year, who played me for a fool—then there will be no speaker in all the world say the name: “The People," with any fleck of a sneer in his voice or any far-off smile of derision. The mob—the crowd—the mass—will arrive then.
i am an ethnologist and human rights activist, in the last years more than anything else against USA Death Penalty and for American Indians prisoners’ rights.
i write, i love to draw and take-create pictures but i’m not an artist .... i hope for a better world and i believe in Freedom, the one we make with our hands !!!
