Man of My Time

You are still the one with the stone and the sling,

Man of my time.  You were in the cockpit,

With the malevolent wings, the meridians of death,

—I have seen you—in the chariot of fire, at the gallows,

At the wheel of torture.  I have seen you : it was you,

With your exact science set on extermination,

Without love, without Christ.  You have killed again,

As always, as your fathers killed,

as the animals killed that saw you for the first time.

And this blood smells as on the day 

When one brother told the other brother :

“Let us go into the fields.” And that echo, chill, tenacious,

Has reached down to you, within your day.

Forget, O sons, the clouds of blood

Risen from the earth, forget your fathers :

Their tombs sink down in ashes,

Black birds, the wind, cover their heart.

Salvatore Quasimodo

Translated from the Italian by Luciano Rebay

Written in the aftermath of the Second World War.  Quasimodo experienced the disastrous bombings of Milan.

The reference is to the story of Cain and Abel in the Bible.