The Return to the Village

The bell rings in celebration,

Autumn of forty-nine.

The war has ended,

But our village has grown smaller.

Many children were killed,

Others disappeared.

Houses abandoned,

Houses in ruins.

Children lost their mothers,

They lost their companions;

Countless untouched bodies

Lie in the mountains and hills.

We returned back to the village,

To our beautiful neighbourhoods,

To sleep again in our homes,

So our wounds might heal.

One wound can never heal —

The wound of a mother;

She carries it with her to the grave,

She who has lost her child.

Let us remember all those

Who never returned.

For us who came back,

Life must go on.

The little school bell

Began to ring again,

And our small village

Seemed at last to stop hurting.

It was the beginning of a peaceful life

For the past sixty years,

And from the depths of our souls

We pray it may be eternal.