Naomi Shihab Nye - Making a Fist [tekst, tłumaczenie i interpretacja piosenki]

"We forget that we are all dead men conversing with dead men"

For the first time, on the road north of Tampico
I felt the life sliding out of me
A drum in the desert, harder and harder to hear
I was seven, I lay in the car
Watching palm trees swirl a sickening pattern past the glass
My stomach was a melon split wide inside my skin

"How do you know if you are going to die?"
I begged my mother
We had been traveling for days
With strange confidence she answered
"When you can no longer make a fist."

Years later I smile to think of that journey
The borders we must cross separately
Stamped with our unanswerable woes
I who did not die, who am still living
Still lying in the backseat behind all my questions
Clenching and opening one small hand