Hälsning från Nicaragua [English translation]

Dear colleague friends,

I send you greetings from a people

on the other side of the Atlantic,

between two continents.

A people who finally lifted themselves out of the ashes

of hundreds of years of humiliation.

A people who carry a hope and a dream

that they themselves may create their future.

I greet you from Nicaragua,

I greet you from Nicaragua.

Dear poet friends who write

of the welfare state's problems,

of excessiveness as a burden,

of boredom and life's emptiness.

Here I see poets who stretch out hands

in hope of a sheet of paper and a pen,

who write songs of life on thick walls

where the bullet holes are still warm.

Poems of love and happiness,

and a future for Nicaragua.

Dear writer friends,

who shout about freedom and democracy,

I greet you from Wall Street,

where the war gives money to the stock exchange.

I greet you from Brooklyn where freedom

is to die in a gutter.

I greet you from Miami where democracy

is that everyone carries weapons.

I greet you from Nicaragua,

I greet you from Nicaragua.

Internationalists, I see that you exist

and I see what you do.

I see how much you sacrifice,

I see the responsibility you feel.

I see that you look at the world as one

and that everything that happens is connected.

I see you as my sisters and brothers,

I see you like the air I breathe.

You are the future light,

you are all we have.

And you are the future of life,

and you are the children of history.

So I am greeting from Nicaragua,

I greet you from Nicaragua,

• Artist:Björn Afzelius
• Album:Hälsning från Nicaragua (1990)