| English
Dutch
Turkish
Arabic
Papiamento
Sranan
Bahasa-Indonesia
Frisian
French
Flemish
German
Italian
Sicilian
Danish
Swedish
Norwegian
Finnish
Faroese
Kiswahili
Mandinka
Somali
Zulu
Afrikaans
Czech
Serbian / Croatian
Hungarian
Polish
Russian
Esperanto
Romanian
Bengali
Urdu
Malayalam
Divehi
Kannada
|
KERWIN- While some of
them will hunt you down
- to kill the
rest of you
- the others
will hold festivals
- to have
something to do
-
- And even while
they make of you
- the very first
to die
- because of
age-old Dutch racism
- we both know
it's a lie
-
- And even if it
were the truth
- what would it
really change?
- the jingle of
the guilder
- is the rattle
of the chains
-
- The chains
they used to bind the blacks
- and certain
whites as slaves
- strange the
ways they have devised
- to get folks
to behave
-
- Lord knows the
list is long
- no space is
left to fill
- the names of
those they've wronged
- the unknown
ones they've killed
-
- A-h-h Europe -
your rope - your rope
- around my
people's neck
- after all you
have taken and done
- what more do
you expect?
-
- Yes!!! they
come and why not
- to see
theirdiamondstolen sparkle in your sky
- for us poor /
folk / of a darker race
- it's always
been a place to go and die
-
- Kerwin:
- The 1st black
to set a foot
- in America as
a slave
- was left in
trade
- from a Dutch
man-o-war
-
- Kerwin: what
makes you differ
- from the
others racism had die
- is that your
case of death by race
- is one they
can't deny
-
- A blood-stain
on a taxi-seat
- meant more
than your life
- that's why you
layed down on the street
- when you were
wounded by that knife
-
- When they
decide
- that one must
die
- it's while the
blood is wet
- that we're
obliged
- to ask
ourselves
- which one of
us is next?
-
- Remember the
friends close to you
- who did not
look like you?
- who did not
treat you as
- so many of the
others do?
- Friend is a
friend is a friend
- is not a color
of a skin
- but a way of
being
- this! hate
cannot relate
- and this is
where racism steps in
-
- Racism is one
thing we learn from history
- has done more
to damage man than any one disease
- people live
and people die: that is a natural fact
- but not so if
the reason why is
- just because
you're black
-
- Kerwin you
were not the first
- but we want
you to be the last
- we want
fascism to stop
- and we must do
it fast
-
- Kerwin
- No one
believes it - Kerwin did not - had he - alive
- he would be -
but he didn't believe -
- racism -
fascism - Adolf Hitlerism
- or just plain
Amsterdam snobism
-
- No one really
believes there is a thing called
- racism
- it's always
something else -
- it's not
because of your color
- they say: it's
the way you carry yourself -
-
- Who knows what
reasons they'll retrieve
- racism is
something no one believes
- even when the
black lays dying in the street
- no one
believes it
-
- Closed eyes
don't see it
- racial abuse /
an excuse
- no one
believes it though it is true -
- Kerwin didn't
believe / why should you?
- Plus how could
he?
- no one
believes racism to be -
- like they
didn't believe the Vietnamese
- pleas to live
in peace
- they didn't
believe blacks should be free
- after 400
years of misery
-
- KERWIN
- They didn't
believe / they didn't
- believe that
we too should
- have a right
to breathe -
- no one
believes racism to be /
- that people
are people
- with a right
to be happy and free - happy and free
-
- No one
believes that to be the way it should be
- no one
believes it possible because no one believes
- people don't
even believe
- what their
eyes can see
- the injustice
/ the waste / the inhumanity
- they just
don't believe - they just don't believe
-
- The horror is
so normal
- so, so, so
informal
- that the
normal horror is believed good
- even at the
cost of blood -
-
Written during 'sunrise-dawn' guarding
of the Kerwin Memorial Statue in the
Vondel Park, Amsterdam
25 August 1984
by Maurice Di
|
Listen
- Learn
- about the English language
|
