[The Pond]

There was a pond where, for years, two groups of old fish ruled:

one called themselves reformists, the other conservatives.

Both prescribed remedies for the pond,

spoke of water, the future, and staying in their homeland,

but when it came to their own children,

they quietly took them out of the water and sent them toward the sea.

They would say:

“The sea is a better place;

they will have a future there.”

But the people’s young fish were kept in the same pond—

the very place where a fish-eating bird circled above them every day.

Every morning, the heron would come

and snatch one of the young fish.

The old fish would watch and say:

“What a tragedy...”

But the next day,

another young fish would become its victim.

And stranger still,

their own children were never in the pond.

They were swimming in distant seas,

growing up in safer waters,

while the old fish prayed for them from that very pond.

Years passed.

The pond became empty of the young

and crowded with old fish.

They stayed too long,

rotted too long,

and the water of the pond became so stagnant

that even the heron no longer came for them.

One day, the heron landed on a branch and said:

“These are no longer prey;

they are the very smell of death.”

And the pond finally understood

that what remained was neither life nor politics;

only an army of old fish

who had sent their own children to the sea

while leaving the children of the people

to become prey for the heron.

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