The City Learned to Speak
Astrikos Katoikos
The morning broke in shattered colors
Windows drank a newborn sky
Old commandments lost their echoes
Questions learned the reason why
Books escaped their gilded prisons
Crossed the squares and filled the air
Painters traded borrowed kingdoms
For the lives already there
Brick by brick the streets remembered
Names forgotten by the great
Language left the marble banquet
Sat beside an iron gate
Strike the canvas! Wake the silence!
Give the nameless room to stand
Words are living
Words are burning
Written by a human hand
Strike the canvas! Wake the people!
Let tomorrow shape today
No one owns the sky forever
Dawn invents another way
Factories became cathedrals
Steam replaced the ancient choir
Poets gathered scraps of daylight
Fed them to a restless fire
Beauty wore no jeweled garments
Dust could shine without disguise
Every corner held a universe
Waiting for awakened eyes
Children laughed at broken statues
Workers argued under rain
Nothing sacred feared examination
Truth could flourish out of pain
History remained unfinished
Still rewritten line by line
Hands that once were left unnoticed
Now became the clearest sign
Pages cannot chain a people
Songs refuse a master's key
When imagination rises
Minds discover how to see
Strike the canvas! Wake the silence!
Raise a future yet unknown
Every heartbeat
Every dreamer
Builds a world unlike the old
Strike the canvas! Wake the people!
Leave no borrowed crown behind
Art begins where fear is broken
Freedom first appears in mind