What Have We Done To Distraught Ourselves? Poem by Dorina Brandusa Landen

Once again come those with whistles
and those with rusty swords
those bestow by the Lord of the earth
those bestow by the earth to be fruitless
soaked with sweat
inside and outside
sometimes they get cold
inside outside
shout and sing
burst into unbearable laughter
or into uncontrollable weeping
in anticipation of a brutal descent
in a reality that seems already lived

out of fear they gathered
they've learned to love to hate
to buy and sell
tamed terrified
refugiated into their skin and imagination
free but more lonely
leaning their swaybacks on peripheral walls

leaving their shadow on the asphalt
they make the grasses to groan
ahead the death of yesterday

an ordered and chaotic flock
a huge gray bizarre army
from which nobody is defecting
surfeited faces that barely dare to say something
occasionally they swear sparingly then even more silence
to hear how thorns prick into flesh
and how the earth is groaning as the crying of a wheel
on roads wiped by someone

as though they have bit with one mouth
from the same slice of life
in an old world a decadent continent
where only petty politicians are born
pragmatics and even less intelligent
proud of how their soft-hearted brains blossom
delivering sentences meaningless principles
noticing the turn of the century
a possible repeat of history

at the feast of these vulnerable countries
they eat and breathe the long breath
of millions of soothed lungs
ah mankind at the intersection of loneliness
somehow my companions
of which solidarity binds me
of our quality of zealous citizens
serving grandiose ideals
that society thrusts us in the throat
with enthusiasm and anger

but where's the future where're the treasures
where are our horses with golden horseshoes
those who straddled are us
those who dismounts are the others
in the sun we ripe like apples
death will reap our winter straws.

really what have we done to distraught ourselves?