When Memory Became a Crime

Paroles de « When Memory Became a Crime »

What you removed remained in me
What you forbade returned in sound
The paper emptied in your hands
But absence gathered weight around

I kept the missing in my voice
One breath beyond your sealed design
You built a law against recall
And memory became a crime

Lex iubet oblivisci
Memoria vetita
Quod deletum est, taceat
Nullus testis maneat

They cut the dates from every wall
Removed each face from every frame
Rewrote the census line by line
Then swore that no one ever came

The houses kept their measured dust
The cups remained, the beds were warm
But every ledger closed its mouth
Before the clerks declared reform

But memory is not a document
No seal can govern what I saw
It lives beneath the practiced speech
Beyond the reach of written law

When memory became a crime
I held the missing in my voice
You changed the dates and sealed the doors
The empty chairs refused your lie

When memory became a crime
I learned what paper cannot keep
Every life you tried to erase
Returned each time I dared to speak

Помним ви
Вие бяхте тук

What you removed remained in me
What you forbade returned in sound
A record may be made to vanish
The body keeps what ink denies

They painted over children’s marks
Still faintly rising by the door
Sold every coat before the thaw
Then counted no one there before

A clerk inspected vacant rooms
And called the stripped foundations clean
But floorboards kept the weight of feet
And plaster held what they had seen

No archive owns what I remember
No seal can govern what I saw
The more you order me to lose them
The more precisely I recall

When memory became a crime
I held the missing in my voice
You changed the dates and sealed the doors
The empty chairs refused your lie

When memory became a crime
I learned what paper cannot keep
Every life you tried to erase
Returned each time I dared to speak

Memoria vetita
Nullus testis maneat

Не сте изчезнали
Паметта остава

I cannot give them back their hours
I cannot mend the severed years
I can refuse your final sentence
And keep their human measure near

Помним ви
Вие бяхте тук
Не сте изчезнали
Паметта остава

You remain...

When memory became a crime
We held the missing in our voice
You changed the dates and sealed the doors
The empty chairs refused your lie

When memory became a crime
Your perfect record came apart
Every life you tried to erase
Returned through a thousand throats

Memoria non moritur
Паметта остава

When memory became a crime...

The crime was never memory
The crime was your command to lose
I kept one breath beyond your reach
Now it returns through all of us