Cracked wings

He is sitting on my heart.

He is sitting on my heart.

I can't help it if he is sitting on my heart, 

If he gave me his name and a bit of his blood,

If he is the root to the branch I bloom on.

He is sitting on my heart.

I saw in him a hero with cracked wings.

He had wanted to soar too fast, too high, 

With the courage of innocence and youth

He had missed, by so little, so few, 

The wisdom that comes with the years.

He is sitting on my heart.

I envy his spirit

I admire his battle

I praise his dignity

Mingled with insolence

He was a bird unable to fly

Whose eyes couldn't brush the skies

By fear of crumbling under the weight of grief.

Sometimes innocence cannot be regained.

He had lost the flippancy of childhood drawings, 

The liberty of the soul that had been spared.

The journey is long for a bird who cannot fly.

Contemplate these wings, majestic, 

These feathers moire and bright

Which momentum has deserted.

Still he learnt to walk.

His coat kept its shine

He went to the end of the pilgrimage, 

Never counted the steps.

Did he will his audacity to me?

Would I, too, have tried to fly?

His legacy echoes in my mind, 

Like the song of an eagle

Calling me to greater heights.

He is sitting on my heart, 

He never abandoned me.

I sewed him on my heart

To keep him in my memory.

To my grand father, Michel Barberon,  who survived the concentration camps in Buchenwald, who took risks but never saw himself as a hero or a brave soul.