"Praise to a Freedom Combatant". Poem by Erich Fried

To read it in Spanish, click here.

Not long after the end of the Vietnam War, the blood of the dead still warm, Erich Fried's 100 Poems without a Country (winner of the I Premio Internacional de los Editores) was published in Spain. At the moment I have in my hands a copy which was lend to me by the sculptor Mariano Poyatos ten years ago. I got on touch with him to give him the book back. I hope his mind will be as sensitive as his hands, but in any case I'm ready to accept his complaints. In order to deflower this blog I've decided to translate this poem full of irony. E. Fried (Viena, 1921-Baden Baden, 1988) always mantained an exceptional sensitivity. He denunced social matters in a poetic voice, using aesthetics and irony in the same way as Brecht. When he was seventeen, he and his mother were forced to go into exile just after Fried's father was killed during questioning by the Gestapo. In 1963 he became a member of Gruppe 47 with Böll and Grass. According to Pacifism and Marxism, Fried was able to show the current situation trough a perennial poetry. Many of his poems are based on the conflict in Vietnam, and they may be applicable to later atrocities as Iran-Iraq, Yugoslavia, Gulf wars, and others. I'll try to make a proper translation of his poem:
When he was asked
what he felt watching and listening
every detail of the war,
he fixed his glance on the one
who was questioning him
-Michael Carlton-,
and answered:
Nothing.
Nothing in face of the dead,
when listening
women's wails,
tortured prisoners' groans,
and nothing when the sound
of the mutilated children's crutches
banged on the floor.
Nothing at smelling
the boamboo mats covering the corpses,
nor listening to his comrades' rasping breaths,
black and provincial men recruited
for the great bach.
Nothing.
Oh, perfect warrior,
the goal of the personal strategist
finally achieved.
You are free of weakness,
always available!
Wihtout you,
These decisive wars,
remote wars far away from the fatherland,
would be impossible.
What do you feel?
Nothing.
Hero from this world reduced to a thing:
The one like you
also will be able to throw
children to the dump
or to the gas chamber,
less painful death than napalm.
Happy, the General
who uses you:
He'll be free of limits,
He knows you are free
of femenine scruples.
In order to become perfect you miss:
Nothing.
A monument should be built,
you, still alive,
still shooting,
still throwing grenades,
still being paid,
giving yourself pleasure
on Saigon bordellos.
You're as hard and constant
as those stone and bronze men.
So, you feel nothing,
what could disconcert you?
what could warn you?
what could save you?
Nothing.

This post was published on Kostas Vidas in Spannish on May 21st, 2008.