I walk down to the Pegnitz river.
I walk along the banks of green and white flowers —
a quiet place of respite,
smelling both sweet and fowl.
Both the crow and the swan venture on its water’s roof,
never daring to enter the house that man has built.
She lay below and looked up to see,
the black eyes of an eager crow
glaring through the glass.
To cry underwater is not impossible, to learn is fatal.
A baby’s cry can never be silenced in the mind of a mother.
A girl with no direction,
pulled through life by a man’s cruel hands,
In the name of the father!
A mother must pay.
But it is only she who knows that water
cannot wash her sins away.
She stares back at the world - taken from her.
Will anyone visit?
Utter sweet prayers?
Send the mocking crow away?
I throw a lump in the crow’s direction.
It scraws into the sky.
The wise swan takes the bread.
Instead of death,
I sent her a swan instead.
This is in memory of the young girls and women sentenced to drown for infanticide. Their positions were so dire that they were left with a hurrendous choice, which we can hardly comprehend today.
Tragedies happen to desperate people left with no options - something we are witnessing today in the supposedly free world.
We are never too many steps away from history's dark past, nor are we superior, as our society is only five steps removed from barbarism.
