Dachau’s ashes burn my feet <br />The asphalt smokes under me <br />Warheads & bayonets stuck <br />under my nails <br /> <br />I’ll stroke a stray strand of my beloved’s hair <br />And I myself shall smoke <br />crucified Christ-like on wings of bombers <br />flying through this night to kill Christ’s kids <br /> <br />My skin trembles with explosions <br />as if it were Vietnam <br />and breaking my back and ribs <br />the Berlin Wall runs through me <br /> <br />You talk to me of freedom? Empty question <br />under umbrellas of bombs in the sky <br />It’s a disgrace to be free of your own age <br />A hundred times more shameful than to be its slave <br /> <br />Yes I’m enslaved to Tashkent women <br />and to Dallas bullets and Peking slogans <br />and Vietnam widows and Russian women <br />with picks beside the tracks and kerchiefs over their eyes <br /> <br />Yes I’m not free of Pushkin and Blok <br />Not free of the State of Maryland and Zima Station <br />Not free of the Devil and God <br />Not free of earth’s beauty and its shit <br /> <br />Yes I’m enslaved to a thirst for taking a wet-mop <br />to the heads of all the bickerers & butchers of the world <br />Yes I’m enslaved to the honor of busting the mugs <br />of all the bastards on earth <br /> <br />And maybe I’ll be loved by the people for this <br />For spending my life <br />(not without precedent in this iron age) <br />glorifying unfreedom from <br />the true struggle for freedom <br /> <br /> <br />Translated by Lawrence Ferlinghetti with Anthony Kahn<br /><br />Yevgeny Yevtushenko<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/on-the-question-of-freedom/
