Locked in a prison that is no prison
But is one and the same;

The same longing to get out,
The same need of wings
To fly to the farthest reaches of the earth.
Wanting to see
Wanting to know
But wanting what is forbidden most...

Dropped in a bottle, that is no bottle
But is one and the same;

The same grasping of slippery walls
That cannot be broken and cannot be grasped.
So easily is the outside seen,
So easily those walls come between:
It is easy to bind the body
But how can the mind be confined?

In vain the searching mind
Tries to analyze foreign cultures,
Foreign ideas; foreign to its people...
But quickly the door is slammed in its face.
"Curiosity killed the cat!"
People often spit in
its face,
It seems they've forgotten,
That satisfaction brought it back.

Rigid, unthinking traditions:
Society's boundaries
That exist unexplained,
Lines uncrossed that we know should be;
These are the prisons of our minds,
These are the shackles whose keys we must find.