On the cardboard rooves fall heavy raindrops, blind is the grass trampled solid by the feet of thousands and gone the sun behind the black drifting clouds.
I feel the hearts of comrads beating so close by, threading the months on a ring, restless the spring in the blood of the whole world.
The grey evening awakes in the echo of shots, glances seek each other, gaze unto the heart and the heart cries.
Woman, you have been brave, pale as a sheet, a sheet, fastened under the chin of the dead.
In the weeping wind death is searching, the beating of a thousand hearts is the knell. You died alone, only the pines and the dried grass, to whom you gave your blood, were singing.
I do not know what you lived for, however your death felt so close to me, that its cruelty was a blow to the senses.
Vera Hozáková: April 1942 [ Listen to Mrs. Hozáková recite her poem in Czech]
