In between two Brabantine hills
history is ground down to dirt.
No stone, no clod but has a sense,
but it has hart a hand, a heart.

Hearts and hands that I love and am,
serfs that another's body lusts,
how long you grubbed, and for whose gain
you died in sin and neediness!

Your history am I … The earth
and I are all that yet remain,
two acids that approach each other.

They rouse the tastebuds in my mouth,
they put the virus in my veins,
O stablemaids and drunkards, fathers.

Translated by James S. Holmes