Επιμέλεια: Εύα Πετροπούλου Λιανού
You have laid down your sword and taken up the staff of budding life. In your left hand, you carry the sorrowful blue crystal of the world. Your leather bag brims with water. The season has come for you to walk the desert a place where nothing is visible, no matter how far the eye can see. There is no right answer in life. Here, you must pierce your own obscurity and take a single step forward with that staff. You must keep walking through the time buried deep within yourself.
You sit upon a crumbling chair of sand, eyes half-closed, facing the horizon. The crystal reflects the world upside down. The nightmares of soldiers those who had to kill, and those who were killed linger in its depths. Hatred and false words lie in heaps. You remember the days when you slept like the dead on the red-hot ground. The dried-up river. Your parched, wandering thoughts. But here, only the desert remains dry, silent, real.
Beneath the canopy of the universe, we are not going anywhere. And yet, when you drank from the leather bag, the stars above shimmered into life. Countless grains of sand flowed like time between your fingers. Life is a precious hardship. Aside from you who feels it in your body, in your soul there is no one else. Everything you live through is your life. The universe and the earth pass through you, and they fill you.
When your staff strikes the ground, water surges forth. From that place, the budding staff takes root, grows straight, and stands alone casting a single shadow as a single tree. To erase the nightmares of soldiers and the resentments of the dead, you sing. A requiem for all living things.
THE END OF THE CONFLICT
First, the sun was extinguished by the mob. I have walked through a hundred years of hell. Huge pillars burned down. The tree of hope fell, and the river of sorrow burst its banks. In a dark room like a dungeon, I crouched down, and my back ached with exhaustion. I clearly saw the cruel smiles of those who had been oppressed when they gained power.
I realized this life was but a fleeting dream. We were foolish, filled with anger, and greedy. People still play within it. People still kill within it. As if humans were mere objects to be counted. A short life. Malice and intent to kill make it even shorter. Reason is exploited by instinct. The pure fire of time burns within us.
What dialectic can justify such violence? They kill even the innocent, driven by their feelings of contempt. But life is not long enough for us to suffer. A hundred years of hell is nothing but a fleeting dream. We cling to the tree of hope, flowing through the river of sorrow, and we can only dream of our individual dreams.
This foolishness, anger, and greed are like revenge. To turn this foolishness, anger, and greed into our strength, we must first recognize that what we have thought is nothing but foolishness, anger, and greed. Let us live this precious life of suffering. Let us live this fleeting dream. Let us see this dream, which comes but once in eternity. Without extinguishing the fire of time, let us deeply believe in the end of conflict.
