About Your Hands and Lies

Your hands grave like all stones,
sad like all prison songs,
clumsy and heavy like all beasts of burden,
your hands sullen like hungry children's faces. 
Your hands nimble and light like bees,
full like breasts filled with milk,
brave like nature,
your hands hiding their soft touch under rough skin.

This world isn't balanced on a bull's horns—
                           it's in your hands.
People, my people,
they feed you lies.
But you're starving,
you need to be fed bread and meat.
And without one full meal at a white table,
you leave this world where fruits bend every branch.
Oh, my people,
especially in Asia, Africa,
              the Near and Middle East, Pacific islands,
                            and my countrymen
—I mean, more than seventy percent of all people—
you're old and absent-minded like your hands,
curious, amazed, and young like your hands.
Oh, my people,
my European, my American,
you're smart, bold, and forgetful like your hands—
like your hands, you're quick to seduce,
                            easy to deceive...

People, my people,
if the antennas lie, 
if the presses lie,
if books lie,
if the posters on the walls and the ads in the columns lie,
if women's thighs naked on the silver screen lie,
if prayers, 
lullabies,
and dreams lie,
if the fiddler at the tavern is lying,
if moonlight on the nights of hopeless days lies, 
if voices lie,
and words,
if everyone and everything is lying 
              but your hands,
it's so they'll be obedient like clay, 
blind like darkness,
and dumb like sheep dogs—
it's so that your hands won't rebel.
And so that in this mortal, this livable world
              —where we're guests all too briefly anyway—
              this merchants' empire, this cruelty, won't end.