For the Grave of a Peace-Loving Man

This one was no philanthropist,
avoided meetings, stadiums, the large stores.
Did not eat the flesh of his own kind.
Violence walked the streets,
smiling, not naked.
But there were screams in the sky.
People’s faces were not very clear.

They seemed to be battered
even before the blow had struck home.
One thing for which he fought all his life,
with words, tooth and claw, grimly,
cunningly, off his own bat:
the thing which he called his peace,
now that he’s got it, there is no longer a mouth
over his bones, to taste it with.

Hans Magnus Enzensberger