The Manuscript of Liberation

Mother, how are you?
I am not well.
In the alleys of this city, life has simply ground to a halt.
Like an old rusted wheel, I push and drag my life along.
In this city of brick and stone, there's no trace of love anywhere!

You know, Mother, every deep night when sleep breaks,
I search for the warm scent of your breast. Even half-asleep, I grope for you.
Someone inside my chest howls and sobs, weeping through every midnight!
What kind of life is this, Mother?
Whether I'm alive or not—I can't quite make sense of it anymore!

Tell me, Mother, do you remember Father?
For more than two decades now, you've been pulling the mill of home alone!
How does it feel without Father? So very lonely? Empty?
As a child I understood—you suffered from terrible loneliness.
Mother, now I too suffer from terrible loneliness.
Nothing feels good to me. No one feels good to me.
A kind of stagnant exhaustion, a cruel melancholy gnaws at me every moment!

If you were beside me, perhaps I'd be well.
I'd lie with my head in your lap, carefree,
and you'd stroke my hair and speak of Father,
—exactly as you used to when I was small.
Now I feel such sorrow...why did I have to grow up!
The more I've grown, the more alone I've become day by day.
As the days increase, this loneliness only grows.
Why isn't everyone in the world like you, Mother?
Why can't a single person see into eyes and understand the anguish within?

Ever since leaving that village for the city, I've been truly dying!
The heap of hatred has grown day by day. Along with it, the reckless flood of solitude.
It would have been so much better...
to become some simple village housewife, domestic, happy,
raising a dozen children. Time would have passed well then!
Why did I come to be civilized and arrange so much misery with my own hands!
Mother, today I understand—it doesn't take much to be happy,
rather, when too much comes into life, it means gradually bidding farewell to happiness!
A tiny life, and I'm spending even that searching for happiness!
The more I've searched, the more I've understood...there's no such thing as "more happiness" in this world.
Arranging for extra happiness means sacrificing immediate happiness...invoking hidden sorrow!
I didn't marry for fear of unhappiness, but not marrying—how happy have I become?

You know, Mother, once I desperately wanted to live, now even that desire is gone.
I desperately want to die. If you weren't alive, perhaps
by now I truly would have died and found peace like Father!
Actually, I too want to find peace like Father.
Everything feels unbearable to me. Everything feels pointless, meaningless.

Tell me, Mother, after Father left, you were obliged
to stay alive because we were there, weren't you?
I too am obliged to live because you exist.
For me, beyond this, there's not even one clear reason to live.
No exhilaration, no joy. No intention or pull.

Now I understand—you too, like me,
felt intense disgust toward life, a world's worth of hatred accumulated against the whole world.
If we hadn't been there, you would have died long ago,
just as if you weren't there, I too would have died long ago
...willingly, consciously, with a sound mind.

You alone are my only reason for living, Mother!
Because my death would be beyond your endurance, I'm still obliged to live!
Otherwise I would have spat in the world's face long ago and run away!
I desperately want you to die quickly and escape this suffering!
I too want to die and live like Father.
Me, you, and Father. The three of us lying side by side in three graves like a happy family. Going to the other side, we'll gain everything we couldn't get on this side.
I want to see you and Father happy on the other side, Mother!
Father surely still weeps, carrying in his heart the pain of not being able to love me, Mother!
Once, just once I want to be happy...me too...with both of you!
On this side, my burden of hatred and disgust has become heavier than the whole world!

I want to live, Mother, I want to live!
I want to die and live. I want to live like Father.
Now I understand—Father did well to die!

Nothing feels good to me, Mother.
In this city's breath after breath: walls, moment after moment: walls. Brick, stone, dust, smoke.
Indifference, cruelty. This city has nothing else!
There are no people in this city, Mother! This city has only population.
This city died and burned to ashes long, long before I'll die!
In this city, no one belongs to anyone, Mother!

I feel so empty these days.
Why must people live so many unnecessary years?
What would happen if some people's average lifespan stopped at just ten or twelve years?
Living till twenty-five or thirty seems utterly pointless and senseless lately.
These years I'm living without reason—does any of it make sense?
Given the chance, I'd die and find peace in one second, Mother!

Lately I'm missing you terribly!
I want to see you so much, Mother! I want
to kiss you with my arms around your neck, hold you to my chest, pressed close for eternity!

Mother, this city is dead.
When I go home, how you bring the tea mug to the table at evening,
drag me from the yard and tell me to eat this and that—
no one says these things here. Whether I exist or not, only I keep track.
Here the rule is—if you eat, you eat; if you don't, you rot and decay!
When you rot, they'll drag and haul the corpse and dump it in the garbage bin at most, and that too because of the stench!
Mother, I terribly miss being constantly annoyed by your excessive care...terribly!

This city is so hard!
I don't feel good anymore! I too want to live like Father.
I don't want to live in this wretched world merely obliged like you.
The mistake you made, I haven't made. Nor will I ever make it again.
No attachment, duty, or obligation like yours—I've kept none of these.
I'm only waiting for you. Waiting for when you'll...!

These days I feel like the only person living in a vast empty desert.
I feel like in this entire desert, stretching for miles and miles, only I exist,
nowhere else is anyone, nothing!
Tell me, Mother, who in this world ever died of illness...tell me?
Long before dying of illness, people die from lack of happiness!

These days I keep remembering only you, and Father.
My head is full of just you two and...the irresistible longing for inevitable liberation!
I wake in the morning thinking of your face,
open my eyes seeing Father's photograph, and close my eyes
imagining you two together.

Mother, look, if the afterlife is true,
I, you, and Father will live once. We too will have a life and family.
I remain absorbed in that sweet dream for endless time...
When will sleep come? When will night end? When will we live together?

The clock's relentless ticking. Tick tick...tick tick...tick tick...!
Let the clock keep running! One day at the right time, the right moment will arrive at the door!
Mother, that day we too will push aside all decay and live as humans once, with unburdened hearts!