THE CONFORMIST

it was as if everything had been experienced before
we had already known those streets before even we walked on them
all the words to be said had already been written
our cold corpses were destined to be sad

little fragments of life and trivial details
included within the limits of our knowledge
but we weren't allowed to change anything at all
this life had to be led that way

while waiting to calm down, after each and every nightmare
there was one statement that we could hold onto:
"Children who eat fire
die before they turn out twenty."

Translated by Zeynep Akkus