Without resolution¶

Their ears are covered; in pain, they wince. I hear nothing. They yell, beware! That sirens blare! I. Hear. Nothing!
They plead with me, help those bleeding, crying, dying but yet…I Hear nothing! (at a whisper) I am on the hunt for le loup-garou.

My anger whispers into a roar…I hear its baiting. Screaming inside me vibrating, loudly, violently threatening to tare me asunder… I hear it restlessly waiting.

A conflagration; with corrupt suffrage, salient indifference and abjuring oppression as its accelerants… I hear it saying. Let loose of me! So I wail. I hunt le loup-garou!

My arm is raised, my fist enraged, it screams for the return of justice,… equality,… decency. But, I hear nothing.
I hear nothing…but my anger. So exquisitely cold it burns. Deep within me. Reverberating painfully. Guiding the hunt. Influencing my pursuit. It has an echo. Sound seeks to stop me, arrest me, beat me, hobble me. But I hear nothing.
I continue my hunt and my anger assures me. I. Will. Hear. Nothing!

Though in the photographed world within, sirens wail and voices yell, I know the truth of the noise.
Sound is irrelevant. Hearing is a torture.
Voices raised in anger and pain, broken cries of the midnight-striken, that is all there is to be known.
Daily conversations lack meaning. Words cease to elicit a reaction. Stories get repeated to futile purpose.

A simple means to spread misery, my voice becomes a hollow shell–a conduit of all that is dull and unjust.

I speak, others listen and all to no purpose.
The drop of water upon a porcelain basin, the roar of the mealtime press, the catcalls and searing of frustrated souls and the whip crack of officers blaring censure or abuse–all is torture in its mundanity, familiarity, fatalism.

Tinny music interrupted by announcements, canned laughter echoing in the halls, dubbed voices stealing authenticity from actors’ lips–no joy or escape to be found in that which is to be heard. Rather than suffer the cruelty of false comfort, I block my ears.
In a soundscape dominated by lies and liars; should rather be deaf. Shush now despairers and sailors, I long for silence.

How sad when a government loses touch with reality… But we will bring them back down to earth… ! Remind them who should be serving whom…

–

Read the original version (russian)

Tale of the Silent Song¶

She is there, beyond the noise and rumbling, beyond words and ideas.
Like a faithful companion, whispering into the ear of my soul, she is there, the voice of the song of my subconscious, the litany of what I am and what I refuse to be.
She hums my doubts and my fears, cries out my dreams and whispers my fantasies. She plays with truth and falsehood, no rules and no score for her, only freedom.

A sweet, intoxicating siren melody, she hatches a thousand plots or cries of fury. She forces my feet to carry me to my end. She terrorises me and thrills me, I cannot separate myself from her, she is in me, she is me. I can hear her she arises with virulence, is filled with rage. A silent song existing only for me; she is my exclusive torment.

Here ends my confession. Silent song, chant my silence.

Go on! With courage, without looking back. I am a conqueror.
I probably do not see the end now, but I know there’s an end.
I will not give up, I will keep going, I know everything will come to an end one day. I am a conqueror.

I will overcome everything that now oppresses me, crushes me, everything that brings me down.

I am a conqueror. No stepping back.
With my eyes fixed on the future, that which brings hope, the future that will bring freedom.

I walk with pride, firm steps marked by the beating of a tired heart, counting and discounting days that come and go. And it will pass, all this will pass.

I move on, I don’t give up, I keep fighting… The fight is not over, but it will one day, and I will conquer, I know.
Just a bit more and I can almost see freedom, I can almost feel it with my hands.

I’m looking ahead. I don’t give up, I don’t fall, I continue… For you, for me, for the beauty of living.

I raise my fist but not as a political gesture like you would assume
You who are outside of this prison
I raise my fist to try and give back meaning to those three words that France taught the world:

• FREEDOM
• BROTHERHOOD
• EQUALITY
  I raise my fist because, even though I am here inside, I continue to cultivate a utopia within my soul
  I raise my fist and you cannot see my face
  But you know – you know very well – that I am not crying
  Neither teargas nor fear can faze me.
  I raise my fist because I want justice.
  Social justice
  And freedom
  A remark: this last one here has a particular taste and smell.

__

Read the original version (in Italian)

You can hear little birds singing day and night where I live.
Today was a very difficult day for me.
Everything was set for me to sleep like a baby, but that was not the case.
At dawn, the voice of a crow woke me up abruptly.
What a disturbing animal!
It even broke a window glass with its beck.
The morning was beautiful
But no sooner did a layer of very dark cloud cover the sky.
Heavy raindrops, it rained cats and dogs!

As soon as the storm was over, I turned the TV on.
There were images of intense and violent riots in different parts of France.
The Government chose to ignore the protesters and severely suppressed the said movements instead.
At this moment, there are reports of injuries, captives and dead.

Something similar happens in the prisons here.
Full to the brim.
There are also constant rebellions, isolated, transferred and even dead prisoners.
Authorities have no more idea about what to do with prisoners’ problems.
It looks like the whole world is a chaos.
What will happen tomorrow? We do not know.
Meanwhile, may God bless France!

I can feel and hear his distress, hearing his plea of help,
The violence is difficult to tolerate, although he continues
His shouting to be heard above all the noise.

Hearing the police sirens makes him want to run, but he
Stands his ground, knowing he must make his statement,
He can no longer be heard.

So he raises his clenched fist into the air above him, the
Greatest and strongest sign, no words needed.

A fist raised high in the air stands for victory and revolution. We are not afraid; we are strong and victorious! The Great Bertrand — he’s a boss!

These are shouts of warning, shouts of vituperative anger: the young man in this picture criticises all the evil within and outside our country. He is enraged to see the whole system in shambles. We are largely affected by what we see and hear on most of the TV programmes and from the media.
It is true, screaming can be a form of demanding more justice and peace. The outstretched fist of this young man stands for the anger inside him.
This is what I hear and all the noise that resounds in my ears.

The text and the photo remind me of the fact that, during all these years in prison, I have had to relentlessly raise my fist to demand justice as a fundamental element of human dignity. As prisoners, we are often subjected to a kind of slow death punishment. For this reason, we must have the courage to keep our heads up.

As I have already explained, I am one of hundreds of political prisoners in Colombia, who stood up against an unjust political system in which we did not believe. For me, this picture portrays us in other places.

Prison is not a place of peace and serenity!
On the whole, I have got used to it. However, there are some noises I still cannot stand. The worst of them is the noise of metal bars closing in the corridors. There is one right beside my cell, and on days when I get a bit sensitive, I am startled by the electromagnetic locks of these gates being activated.

Aside from that, I don’t hear birds singing, no cat’s meow, only man-made noises. It is devoid of beautiful musical symphony; you mostly hear cries of protest or rage, nothing soothing to the ear.

I wonder how my senses will react the day I regain my freedom. Nature with the sound of wind in the trees, the sounds of wild animals; I love nature and I now realise the value of certain things I liked without realising how much I would miss them if I no longer had them… Today, I always weigh my options and think about what counts for me; peace, joy and all my loved ones are my major sources of motivation.

I hear the yells for freedom, screams of anguish.
I hear law, government, and its many demands on we, as a people, to remain separated. The sounds you hear are constant in the streets where I come from. The irony is these same sounds erupt in the center of war zones.

Is that where we live? In war zones? Are we soldiers battling on the frontlines to overcome social injustice, and inequality? Why aren’t they listening to us?

We, the people, make the government or so it is said: so how is it that we the people are being left on the outside, crying with clinched fists, high in the air with anger in our voices? This is what I hear when I listen with my heart. Pain, sorrow, choir like cadences of refusal. rRefusal to simply lay down and die. Can you hear my hearts shattering?
With each raised fist, each fallen soldier my heart breaks a little more. Why must we “fight” for justice and equality ? Why aren’t these freely given to we as a people? Atop the screams in the streets of Lyon, I hear the whispers of oppressive ideologies loud and clear. With so much pain and anger blaring through the air, crowding the space around me, I often wish I was deaf.