The Ballad of the Outcasts
            

            Paola Marziani 

            I.
 

    I have been a maid

   to such lady-like ladies

            that I could n't understand

            what they ordered me

            while kneeling on floor

            while scrubbing till shine;
 

            I have been a whore           

            on a street in the night

            they pointed their fingers

            they hurted me bad

            they branded my face

            and they called me shame;
 

            I have been a transex

            they arrested me at once

            and they then killed me.

            "You may call him 'it',"

            said the police;
 

            They said I was insane

            they locked me up

            they broke all my bones

            through electrical shocks;

            I have been a pariah

            left alone dying young

            they all could see me

            and they turned from me;
 

            I have been a Jew

            not certainly a human

            they stripped me naked

            they rushed me in,

            in a camp to my death.
 
 

            I have never learned

            how to smile and to cheer

            once alone in the wind
 

            but
 

            I am proud to have been

            all of the above

            for they never would say

            for you never could see

            that I acted like them.
 

            II.
 

            I was barely eighteen

            fighting the Nazis

            in a resistance group;
 

            They arrested me at night

            they tortured me

            they raped me twice

            they killed a traitor

            and they then let me free;
 

            My fighting comrades

            mistook me for the traitor;

            they lured me out,

            and they then killed me.
 

            To my parents abashed

            since long I am oblived

            no memory or word

            of me will be spoken
 

            but
 

            I am proud to have passed

            all of the above

            for I never betrayed

            my conscience.
 

            Paola Marziani, México City, June 1995
            © P. Marziani, all rights reserved. This and other poems by Paola Marziani are published by Starrlink.