Note III

Selected Poems of Juan Gelman
 translated by Hardie St. Martin

Note III

walking on my bare knees
through a field of broken glass /
walking on my naked soul
through a field of broken comrades /

whom neither the twilight nor the sea
that washes over any man will wash /
i don’t know what’s washing over them now /
quiet at last / unafraid

of death / killed /
by bullets or cyanide / by
their own or another’s hand / dead
all the same / rotting

under the earth in this land
that took them in / fires
put out by military hatred / urge
us on to victory sons

Notes  —  (Calella de la Costa, Paris Rome, August-October, 1979)
to Eduardo Galeano
          to Helena