The Song of the People

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(Image source: teilzethelden.de)

The song danced on many lips in the crowded stadium. The song no longer felt sad; it was a forgotten song, rediscovered by a dictator. Rather reinvented. “Whoever is taking me back to the limelight, I will not complain. I do not judge because I have wanted this for more than half a century,” sighed the song when there was a pause. 


It was a song that a freedom fighter wrote. It was everywhere throughout the 1930s and 1940s, even on every child's lips. “It is more difficult to make a child like a song unless it is honest,” the song picked up her train of thought from where she left it when the pause ended. This was a longer pause. The dictator was about to speak, and the silence spread like a blue silk cloth falling slowly above the crowd.  

“This song is in our blood and our ancestor’s souls. I want to bring you those days of valour and honesty. When I hear this song, my heart is full of joy,” he said.


The song felt a pang of guilt inside. She felt her momentary hope slip into a premonition of terrible things coming. Earlier, she had a peek into his soul when he was singing, and she had flinched, sensing a darkness beyond evil. “I am helping him! I wish I could fly away,” she thought. 


The dictator had moved on from the song to the looming war with the neighbours. “Oh, soon I will have to wear a new attire, and the remix will surely be a military marching song. So this is his gameplan,” the song felt creepy and insecure. 


Then the loudspeakers caught her. She was thrown in the air like a violent blow. She was shattered and shredded by the time a hundred lips caught her. Those hundred throats tried to weave her back into the soulfulness she once had. Those hundred souls were trembling from unknown fears and a known madness. They filled her with new tunes of fear, pride and vengeance. 


When the crowd dispersed and the dictator’s cavalcade left, only a bird was left to pick what was remaining of her up from the ground. Carrying her on his beak, the bird flew, hoping to cross the high fence and reach another land before it was too late. 

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