The requiem

"We don't, we don't, we don't wanna die!" they said,
"You are the enemies, the enemies, the public enemies!" they were told.
They said it humbly, just so humbly,
and they were killed simply, so very simply.
And their death was so despised, so cheap,
that any effort to live,
seemed so painfully stupid,
as a rough, tough, quite bitter journey
through a rather complicated labyrinthine maze,
seeking nihility…


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*This is my take/translation of a poem with the same name from a great poet of our recent history, Ahmad Shamloo. It's been playing in my head over and over recently...