I’m wandering foreign forests, my heart is jerking my larynx!
Not with fear - with rage, with despair!
Mosses and turf covered trace of wolf troop,
Survivors suffer dog’s fate!

None shaggy snout will look out of the thicket,
In eyes - insanity, fear, greed or betrayal!
Wolf trace on open space disappeared long ago,
The wolf knows very well how extermination smells!

I still hear and I don’t believe my ears
But everything confirms me it at every turn:
You’re an animal and you live like animal
But you’re not wolves, not wolves anymore!

Brother thinks that he’s safe when he hid in the forest
But not God is chasing him! Man is chasing!
The propellers swish overhead, hail of bullets and scream
Which pulls out pupils from the eyes!

Drunk faces of shooters above the gun barrels in treetops,
Boiling rain of fired off cartridges!
It’s not a hunting anymore, not a raid, not a chase!
It’s a planned destruction of species!

From hands in uniforms, from helicopters
A machine weapon impacts in heads
Black bullets and shouts of officers:
You’re not wolves, not wolves anymore!

Who hasn’t fallen into madness, who hasn’t gone to the shot
Is still running, stumbling on legs,
But there’s no hideouts which he had, which he knew,
The furious pack of hounds will sniff him around everywhere!

And just think that long ago he treated them like booty
That wasn’t worth wolf fangs!
Today they can bring their relative in front of their masters feet
Or they rip him on the order without words!

Because who’s running - will die on the run!
And who stopped - will fall where he stood!
With panic we’re writing in blood on the snow:
We’re not wolves, we’re meat to shot!

This one whimpers shot down, that one whines on his back.
How can I help it alone? I can’t do anything here.
Let it happen what has to happen anyway
When a bullet will go on my way in front of me!

It’s tearing into blood an old wound on my neck
But until wolf bleeds - the wolf is alive!
So it’s not death yet! Death has got sharper fangs!
It’s not my triumph but victory - not their!

Whine in uproar and complaint are useless!
Until I have enough blood in the veins
I will be the first to jump my brother to the throat,
When he’ll howl - we’re not wolves anymore!
© ?. Translation, 2015
© Jacek Kaczmarski. Polish translation