Stay Tuned

Hey yeah!
Everybody run run run
Everybody scatter scatter
Some people lost some bread
Someone just die
Police dey come
Army dey come
Confusion everywhere
Several minutes later
All don cool down brother
Police don go away
Army don disappear
Them leave Sorrow Tears and Blood
Them regular trademark!

My people self dey fear too much
We fear for the thing we no see
We fear for the air around us
We fear to fight for freedom
We fear to fight for justice
We fear to fight for happiness
We fear to fight for progress
We always get reasons to fear
We no want die
We no want quench
Mama dey for house
My pickin dey for house
I get one wife
I get one car
I get one house
I just marry
Mama dey for house
Papa dey for house
I no want quench
I want enjoy
Ah!

So policeman go slap your face
You no go talk
Army man go whip your yansh
You go dey look like donkey
Rhodesia dey do them own
Our leaders dey yab for nothing
South Africa dey do them own
Them leave Sorrow Tears and Blood
Them regular trademark!
That is why!
Everybody run run run
Everybody scatter scatter scatter
Some people lost some bread
Police dey come Army dey come
Confusion everywhere

© Knitting Factory Records.

In this dead-end street
they smell your breath
lest, God forbid,
you’ve said I love you.
They sniff at your heart—
these are strange times, my dear
—and they flog love
by the side of the road at the barrier.
Love must be hidden at home in the closet.
In this crooked dead-end street, twisted with cold
they fuel their bonfire
with poems and songs.
Danger! Don’t dare think.
These are strange times, my dear.
The knock on the door in the night
is someone who’s come to snuff out the light.
Light must be hidden at home in the closet.
Butchers, with their bloody clubs and cleavers,
are posted at the crossing.
These are strange times, my dear.
They remove smiles from lips, and songs from mouths, by surgery.
Happiness must be hidden at home in the closet.
Songbird kebab
roasts over flames of lily and jasmine.
These are strange times, my dear.
The devil, drunk on victory, feasts at our funeral.
God must be hidden at home in the closet.

© Sirus Shamlu. English translation by Zara Houshmand.

For the sake of protecting Tibet’s independence
Our kings resisted the Red Chinese leaders
From the true meaning of the middle path
Raise the Tibetan flag, children of the Snowland!

For the sake of honoring the Snowland
And to win Tibet’s complete independence
Based on the manifold truth
Raise the Tibetan flag, children of the Snowland!

For the sake of the return of the Protector
For the sake of uniting Tibetans home and abroad
From the wounds of the souls in flames
Raise the Tibetan flag, children of the Snowland!

This snow lion and snow mountain adorned flag
Is the national flag of the Tibetan people
Avenge those departed for the sake of Tibet

Raise the Tibetan flag, children of the Snowland!
Raise the Tibetan flag, children of the Snowland!

© Lolo. English translation courtesy High Peaks Pure Earth.

A homesick sparrow,
Perches on the heart’s window;
With longing eyes,
It cranes out to glance at the houses,
At the distant skies,
Waiting for a cheerful morning,
With promises laden,
To land like a turban,
On the shoulder of the homeland.
With each coup in a dark abyss we plunge,
The heavy-footed junta besiege our songs,
They agitate our inkpot, confiscate its internal peace.
They poison the cheerful spring,
And place their muzzles on everything.
What a pleasant dream they disfigure,
In the eyes of each mother.
But they can’t manage to silence us. Never.
In their cells we sip,
The perseverance syrup,
To remain bold and steadfast.
O my times in incarceration
O my pain of longing and torment,
If I lose touch with you,
Who, in this time of coercion, would I be?
If I lose touch with you I will betray,
The little ones yet to come,
If I lose touch with you,
Conceited and self-centered I will become.
So long as I have a voice in my chords,
What prison—or even death—can silence me?
No. We will never succumb.
They have no say,
In our destiny. No they don’t.
We are the ones who bring life,
To the dead pores of dormancy.
O my sweetheart,
My life partner,
In the high regards I will always keep you.
O my beloved daughters,
Nestled in the shade of the kind people.
O the luminous space in the eye range:
Warm me up with your peaceful greetings,
With your letters.
Give my greetings to my peers;
Give my greetings to the clouds;
Give my greetings to the earth;
Give my greetings to the crowds;
And to the words of romance,
In the notebooks of the youth.

© Family of Mahjoub Sharif. English translation by Adil Babikir.

I don’t sing for the love of singing,
or because I have a good voice.
I sing because my guitar
has both feeling and reason.
It has a heart of earth
and the wings of a dove,
it is like holy water,
blessing joy and grief.
My song has found a purpose
as Violeta would say.
Hardworking guitar,
with a smell of spring.

My guitar is not for the rich
no, nothing like that.
My song is of the ladder
we are building to reach the stars.
For a song has meaning
when it beats in the veins
of a man who will die singing,
truthfully singing his songs.

My song is not for fleeting praise
nor to gain foreign fame,
it is for this narrow country
to the very depth of the earth.
There, where everything comes to rest
and where everything begins,
song which has been brave song
will be forever new.

© Joan Jara and Amanda Jara. English translation © Joan Jara and Adrian Mitchell, reprinted from His Hands Were Gentle: Selected Lyrics of Víctor Jara (Middlesbrough, UK: Smokestack Books, 2012).

I am the victim of an addiction
A mania for all things toxic.
It could be an affliction
But instead it’s rather comical

I drink beer, I pop pills
Still I hardly sleep at night
Come morning I’ll sell the empties
Julie will help me with my plight

© Jan Maivald. English translation by Jitka Vondrousova.

[…] Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one’s own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexing as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty. But we must move on. […]

Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and dealt death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our own nation: The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours.

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered. […]

These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wounds of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. We in the West must support these revolutions. […]

We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world. […]

© Estate of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. View a complete transcript of this speech on the website of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University.

In a city on a corner
Stands a house that’s mighty grand
Where in glory and in splendor
Dwell the magnates of the rand

What a system! What a system! What a system! What a crime!
We can’t mend it, we must end it
End it now and for all times

Up above the mining compound
Where he joins the picket line
He’s a labor agitator
And his life’s not worth a dime

What a system! What a system! What a system! What a crime!
We can’t mend it, we must end it
End it now and for all times

In the tunnel hot as blazes
Excavating in the mine
He digs gold amidst the rock fall
As they pay him two and nine

What a system! What a system! What a system! What a crime!
We can’t mend it, we must end it
End it now and for all times

Performed by The Robben Island Singers: Muntu Nxumalo, Grant Shezi, Thembinkosi Sithole, and produced by Groundswell Educational Films, NFP.

Indeed Hossein . . .
Is a guiding light
And a rescue ship

It was noon on Ashura
When the dormant Yazid of our time
Rose from his old grave
With the intent to murder the brave and fearless

What crime has our nation committed
Except to cry out for freedom?
Be witness oh merciful God
To the desecration of humanity

Ali rise and obliterate
The wrongdoings of these hypocrites
For they have forsaken justice
To the Devil himself

They have corrupted Mohammad’s religion
To such a degree that
As though the Prophet Mahdi himself
Takes his orders from them

Oh merciful God
Accept us as Hossein’s supporters
And give your blessings
To him and his family

The holy month of Moharam was flooded with blood
At the hands of the devil’s army
Khavarej dressed in religious garb
They place the Quran on spears

The spirit of antichrist is being reincarnated
On these mysterious nights
Oh merciful God
Shine your sunshine on Iran

Ali rise and obliterate
The wrongdoings of these hypocrites
For they have forsaken justice
To the Devil himself

They have corrupted Mohammad’s religion
To such a degree that
As though the Prophet Mahdi himself
Takes his orders from them

© Arya Aramnejad. English translation by Pouneh Attarinejad.

Leap! Howl! Fly! Run!
Freedom feels so good!
Snuffing out freedom feels so good!
Power will be triumphant forever.
Will be passed down from generation to generation forever.
Freedom will also come back from the dead.
It will come back to life in generation after generation.
Like that dim light just before the dawn.
No. There’s no light.
At Utopia’s core there can never be light.
Our hearts are pitch black.
Black and scalding.
Like a corpse incinerator.
A trace of the phantoms of the burned dead.
We will exist.
The government that dominates us will exist.
Daylight comes quickly.
It feels so good.
The butchers are still ranting!
Children. Children your bodies all cold.
Children, your hands grasping stones.
Let’s go home.
Brothers and sisters, your shattered bodies littering the earth.
Let’s go home.
We walk noiselessly.
Walk three feet above the ground.
All the time forward, there must be a place to rest.
There must be a place where sounds of gunfire and explosions cannot be heard.
We so wish to hide within a stalk of grass.
A leaf.
Uncle. Auntie. Grandpa. Granny. Daddy. Mummy.
How much farther till we’re home?
We have no home.
Everyone knows.
Chinese people have no home.
Home is a comforting desire.
Let us die in this desire
OPEN FIRE, BLAST AWAY, FIRE!
Let us die in freedom.
Righteousness. Equality. Universal love.
Peace, in these vague desires.
Stand on the horizon.
Attract more of the living to death!
It rains.
Don’t know if it is rain or transparent ashes.
Run quickly, Mummy!
Run quickly, son!
Run quickly, elder brother!
Run quickly, little brother!
The butchers will not let up.
An even more terrifying day is approaching.
OPEN FIRE! BLAST AWAY! FIRE! IT FEELS GOOD! FEELS SO GOOD! . . .

Cry Cry Cry Crycrycrycrycrycrycry

We stand in the midst of brilliance but all people are blind
We stand on a great road but no one is able to walk
We stand in the midst of a cacophony but all are mute
We stand in the midst of heat and thirst but all refuse to drink

In this historically unprecedented slaughter only the spawn of dogs can survive.

© Liao Yiwu. Adapted from an English translation by Michael Day, originally published in PEN International: Bulletin of Selected Books, Vol. XLII, No. 2, 1992.

Virgin Mother of God, put Putin away
Put Putin away, put Putin away!

Black robe, golden epaulettes
All parishioners crawl to bow
The phantom of liberty is in heaven
Gay pride sent to Siberia in chains

The head of the KGB, their chief saint,
Leads protesters to prison under escort
In order not to offend His Holiness
Women must give birth and love

Shit, shit, the Lord’s shit!
Shit, shit, the Lord’s shit!

Virgin Mary, Mother of God, become a feminist
Become a feminist, become a feminist!

The Church’s praise of rotten dictators
The cross-bearer procession of black limousines
A teacher-preacher will meet you at school
Go to class—bring him money!

Patriarch Gundyaev believes in Putin
Bitch, better believe in God instead!
The Belt of the Virgin can’t replace mass meetings
Mary, Mother of God, is with us in protest!

Virgin Mother of God, put Putin away
Put Putin away, put Putin away!

© Pussy Riot. English translation from Pussy Riot! A Punk Prayer for Freedom (New York: Feminist Press, 2013), reproduced with permission from Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova.