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Showing posts with the label Primo Levi

“If This Is a Man”

You who live safe  In your warm houses,  You who find on returning in the evening,  Hot food and friendly faces:  Consider if this is a man  Who works in the mud  Who does not know peace  Who fights for a scrap of bread  Who dies because of a yes or a no.  Consider if this is a woman,  Without hair and without name  With no more strength to remember,  Her eyes empty and her womb cold  Like a frog in winter.  Meditate that this came about:  I commend these words to you.  Carve them in your hearts  At home, in the street,  Going to bed, rising;  Repeat them to your children,  Or may your house fall apart,  May illness impede you,  May your children turn their faces from you.  — Primo Levi  Translated by Stuart Woolf