Romanian Birthday Wishes

If this is a man

You who live safe
In your warm houses, You who find

returning in the evening, Hot food and faces Friends:
Consider if this is a man Who works in

mud Who knows no peace Who fights for a

bread Who dies because of a yes or a no.
Consider if this is a woman, Without hair and
unnamed

no more strength to remember, Her eyes empty and her womb cold Like a frog in winter
.
forget that this was:
Remember these words. Carve them in your heart

When at home because,
bed, rising;
Repeat them to your children. Or have you undone
Home,
illness impede you, May your children
twist their faces from you.

( Primo Levi, If This Is a Man, 1947)