The Time is Over

For more than thirty years
for every newscast
the newsreader has come on time,
at the same time, to the same screen,
and he’s told me what has taken place
what they said and what they did and what they meant
and he’s said it’s all they know and they don’t know more
and he’s finished with a weather forecast—
dry and cloudy, gales and heat.

For more than thirty years
for every newscast
I have come on time,
at the same time, to the same screen,
and told the newsreader I don’t want to see what I see
I don’t want to hear what I hear
neither to know what is taking place
nor what they say, not what they do, or what they mean,
and the weather forecast
doesn’t trouble me.

Today
the newsreader comes right on time,
at the same time, to the same screen,
and he tells me he’s been coming here for thirty years
to teach me every day to forget the day gone by,
to make me faultlessly forgetful;
he says all I have to do is remember one key thing
exactly as he does
to repeat what they have said,
to do what they have done,
to accept what they have accepted,
to reject what they have rejected,
to eat what they have eaten,
live how they have lived
and so on and so on . . .
until his time is over and he forgets the weather forecast
and I, too, forget to tell him
that these people, in this country,
every day,
are dying.

—Translated by Antony Dunn