They wouldn't give anything to help me Poem by Brane Mozetič

They wouldn't give anything to help me
survive. No faith nor a hope
to repent, beg, be redeemed. No love
to scatter about. So I'd go on
crashing into things, begging for attention,
tenderness, arms
to embrace me. They didn't give
me old traditions, customs, all the days
alike and I don't anticipate any
specifically. They gave me the ability
to experience pain at the turn of a page, to deal
with it at the same time. With clenched
lips. They gave a rude preciseness
which blows up every so often, causing me
to topple down. They gave me a world
in which I'm staggering and which
I can't feel. I can only see a crowd of
people who've put on t-shirts
that say: I'm nobody. Who are you?
We meet in the street, at work, the cinema,
in bars. We talk, ask, answer. And it
hurts us. But we don't know any better.

Translation: 2003, Elizabeta Žargi and Timothy Liu