– Mikael Wiehe; translation Diipak
I am one of many slaving at King Cheop’s pyramid,
It is we who haul the stones and mix the mortar.
We sweat and break our backs under the sun, under the whip,
And I pity he who doesn’t follow orders.
For once you have arrived, you may not come out alive,
No end in sight, the work is never done,
Yet they say the king’s a child of the sun.
Behind fifteen bolts of solid steel, and fifteen double locks,
Sits wealth itself upon the throne of power.
Here there’s nothing that can threaten, here there’s nothing that disturbs.
Here faces never smile but only glower
And if someone has to die, or be beaten for a lie
Here they never hear the howls of distress;
To the pharaoh what’s a slave, one more or less?
But when the night becomes long,
That’s when we strike up a song,
So that our rulers can hear us in the wind.
Of a people once upon a time,
Who had the desire to climb,
A tower high enough to reach the heavens.
But the higher they came,
The farther that it became,
Between the ones who lived on top and below.
And it finally reached up so tall,
That those down low and those up high,
Could no longer understand each other.
And then the tower came down and crumbled.
So it seems as though in every age and in each and every land
Pyramids are built by men upon the soil.
Where the lucky few they sit on top with the power in their hands,
While the masses at the bottom rung they toil.
But if they who in command never wish to understand
And despise instead the ones who give them food,
Then the Pyramid will one day be their tomb.