Each Small Candle

"Each Small Candle" is a song by Roger Waters. It was released on his album In the Flesh Live in 2000.
The song was included in the encore of all the concerts of the 2000 In The Flesh tour, and some of the concerts of the 2002 tour (alternating with "Flickering Flame").

The background

Before performing the song for the first time Roger Waters explained some of the background to an impatient audience. The inspiration to the lyrics came from different sources. The following information is a quote from the official Roger Waters

A few years ago, an Italian journalist from a Florentine newspaper, involved in the Iniziativa contro la tortura, which is the initiative against torture in Northern Italy, sent some lyrics written by a South American man who had been tortured. The English translation (which represents the first stanza of the song) proved to be very moving, and was set to music. The words remained untouched.. Until Kosovo.

The London Times had a piece which told the story of a Serbian soldier who saw an Albanian woman lying wounded in a burned-out building. He left his platoon, went over and helped her, and then joined his men and marched off. There was sense in that image. The rest of the song is about that.

Halfdan Rasmussen

In 1979 Amnesty International (Denmark) published a small book with poems about Human Rights (ISBN: 87-980852-2-0). Among the best were a small poem from Halfdan Rasmussen titled "Ikke Bødlen". The original text of "Ikke Bødlen" is printed below.

Ikke bødlen gør mig bange.
Not the torturer will scare me
ikke hadet og torturen,
Nor the hate and the torture
ikke dødens riffelgange eller skyggerne på muren.
Nor the barrels of death's rifles nor the shadows on the wall
Ikke nætterne,
Nor the nights
når smertens sidste stjerne styrter ned,
When the last star of pain is falling to the ground
men den nådesløse verdens blinde ligegyldighed.
But the blind indifference of the merciless world