double
three
times
infinite erasing
of the past
that is something we can do well
in Bohemia

we want to forget
the present

and prehistory, too

a million years is just a little
heat for little money

the eight-hundred-year-old village of Libkovice
is next to go
nothing obstructs from digging its territory away
feel free to go down the lithosphere

so what – elimination
is an echo
of its German name
labour camp no. 33 – Liquitz, a camp for prisoners of war
Russenlager
after the war, it just mutated
a detention camp before displacement
a corrective labour colony
a corrective educational institution

If a sociologist or an ethnologist wishes to study a genuinely primitive, barbarian community, he should look for it in Libkovice rather than in the Amazon rain forests. If somebody doubts the existence of hell, he should have himself locked up as a young offender.*

MAY THE EARTH’S SURFACE BE FREED FROM ALL PLACES HOSTING
CONCENTRATION CAMPS BOTH IN THE PRESENT AND IN THE PAST!
deprived from their roots hundreds of meters under their root balls
they turn into craters stinking of sulphur – and the varices of power
of the groups of Party’s cocks and screws, sent flying,
irreversibly sclerotize

let’s sublime Libkovice
let’s consider it a sacrifice to expiate our sins,
a substitutionary sacrifice, a burnt offering
let the cadastral area 682969 become all camps of all times and places
each meter towards the inner core shall become one
each decimetre, each centimetre, each millimetre

rejoice, rejoice, for LIBKOVICE is taking our guilt upon itself,
for it will disappear, the bedrock burnt,
the ash scattered in the land of oblivion

Translated by Tereza Marková

Thanks to: "Leave it in the Ground" project

* Václav Benda: On the Serving of Sentences By Young Offenders, Prison Conditions in Czechoslovakia: A Helsinki Watch Report: January, 1989, APPENDIX D, pp.131, 132.