Efraín Bartolomé

At the Hall of the Red Tlalocs ¹
          for Guadalupe Belmontes Stringel  ²

1.

I stroll the courtyards of Tepantitla
like the barefoot kinsman walking the ancient roads
with lightest tread
for fear of causing hurt

The same sunbeam now asleep on the ground
could regret the heaviness of my step

Or the dust    the red molecules    the mortar    the
thoughtful rock

My wife
with unerring eye
takes note of the final details
of this crime:
reads the remains of paradise on the wall
remnants of the wise tree
that once gave light
and shadow
in this wasteland

In the outside air    riddled
Little butterflies fluttering in slow flight

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¹  Minor rain gods, children and brothers of the great Aztec god of the rain and fertility.

²  The poet’s archeologist wife.

2.

Distant audible voices    echoes    aggressive motors

Ants gush from the tezontle  ¹

Grass is growing on the roofs

Suddenly nothing:
bursts of intense silence

I look again at the wail:
What a small dwelling for so much grandeur to inhabit

There remains but
a fragment of glory

The rest
is burning in the aggrieved air of the delicate afternoon

It is all yours    Senoñra
Have it

You know what you give to us and what you take from us

This stifled cry remains lying at your feet.

— tr. Asa Zatz

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¹  Red lava used as building material to this day.

Sam Hamill

Elegy for Old Masters

Suddenly old and once again sleepless,
I rise in the night and slip outside
and climb the steep narrow steps to my terrace
to gaze up again at the southern skies.
I’ve learned to find the Southern Cross
and the Three Marias, but all the rest
remain a distant bafflement of barely dancing lights
on a moonless night in Buenós Aires.

Those who loved and taught me long ago,
those who spoke of solidarity and struggle,
are mostly dead and gone, their bodies
burned or buried — sad-eyed Rexroth,
who loved wandering in the mountains,
became a mountain; Levertov, my dear Denise,
who often spoke of revolutionary love,
is another faint light in the heavens;

Tom McGrath, who grinned and said his poems
were either tactical or strategic, raised
his weary voice and head in wild Irish joy
even as he lay dying in his hospital bed;
and brother Carruth, so troubled in his long life,
found serenity in the end through poems
for his beautiful wife and proclaimed with a laugh
that he was becoming the Dalai Lama.

These skies are a little brighter tonight
because they trod this battered earth and felt
the sufferings and modest joys of others
and turned their full heart-songs against
the killing machine that is our nation.

But where are our revolutionary poets
today?  Poetry’s become a minor industry,
literature a business run by bureaucrats.

Every poet is a teacher, technique the winery sea
in which ideas drown.  Who shall please
the Guggenheims, the Lanais and MacArthurs
and suddenly be declared a genius?
Money and ambition are poisons in the well
at which true Muses drink.  Poetry becomes
a commodity peddled by the well-fed dogs
of corporate duplicity.  No one makes a sacrifice.

I long to hear once more old Etheridge
say a poem, grin, and break into a chorus
of “Willow Weep for Me,” and tell my prison class,
“Write only that one poem you would die for,
the poem that frees you from your chains,
and learn to love not the song, but the singing.”
I would die to hear June Jordan’s cancer-stricken voice
ask me again to publish her Collected Poems.

We were warriors for peace in a world of wars
that never ended, wars against the poor, against women,
wars for bananas, sugar, copper, gold, silver, oil.
I learned democracy from the noble Iroquois,
and walked the sacred path of the Navajo, the Hopi
whose history has been erased along with their faces,
names, and holy places.  Viva Zapatistas!
Whatever our crimes, we did not rent or sell our souls.

Now, toward dawn, I think of those whom I so loved
on this long wakeful night alone, my journey
almost over.  High overhead, the mysterious stars
pass by in silence.  A soft wind rustles the leaves
of trees along Calle Gorritti.  I go back down the steps
and into the house, pour my wine and raise my toast:
Salutations! old friends, my guiding lights.  It is
almost the end of night, almost time for me to sleep.

Sam Hamill

Southern Stars

It is solstice, the beginning
of summer, and almost New Year.
I’m watching Esteban measure out
each small shovelful of coals on his parrilla
where a rump roast slowly simmers.
From this third floor terrace,
we watch Venus, the first
and brightest evening star, emerge
above the Belgrano skyline.

We have been discussing
Galeano and “historical amnesia” —
that of Esteban’s Argentina
and that of my homeland.

A quarter century after the Dirty War,
many of the dictator’s hatchet-men
are still awaiting trial.

What became of Julio Simón —
the infamous Julián the Turk —
torturer and killer who threw
his screaming victims
out of airplanes high above
the Atlantic, bragging,
“I did it for mi patria, for
my faith, and for my religion.
Of course I would do it all again.”

Whatever became of Adolfo
Francisco Scilingo and his boss,
Vice Admiral Mendía, who told him
their victims “would fly,” and
assured him, “ecclesiastical authorities
proclaimed it a Christian,
nonviolent death” for those
accused of crimes against the State.
Scilingo confessed,
“Two thousand political prisoners learned to fly”
into the arms of God’s embrace.

No one knows the names of all the lost,
children stripped from mothers’ arms
in prison camps and sent away.
Today marks sixteen hundred
consecutive weeks the Mothers
of the Plaza have met and marched
from the Plaza de Mayo
to the Obelisk.  Where are their children
today?  Their sons, husbands, grandchildren,
the children of their friends . . .
Who knows?  No one will say.

In El Norte, our victims are always
the other, the ones we know
the very least — Vietnamese farmers or
Cambodian peasants sprayed
with Agent Orange; the innocent
booksellers lining Mutanabbi Street
in Baghdad for a thousand years or more,
bombed into oblivion; the nameless,
numberless and faceless dead of war
lying in Latin American fields and streets
from a hundred American invasions
in a century of unmitigated greed.

No one reveals the whereabouts
of the Black Sites, Bush’s secret prisons.
And official smirking faces — Bush, Cheney,
Rumsfeldt, Ashcroft and the rest
likewise have no apologies to make.
They are the policy experts who enjoy
great fame and fabulous prosperity.
Criminals are the authors of our history.
The worst of evils lies in their impunity.

Esteban jokes about the time
he was stopped on the street by police
and told to cut his hair and shave
or face stiff penalties.  We fill our glasses
with a dry Chablis from the vineyards
of Mendoza and prepare to eat
as our wives come laughing
from the kitchen down below,
relieved to find a cooling breeze.

We put aside all talk of war.
Nations, borders, eternal crimes
against poor, suffering humanity
all evaporate in summer heat
as our communal laughter
rises like a shining star,
shared by those who are still surprised
to be laughing at all, grateful,
overjoyed to be alive.

Ernesto Cardinal

Calls

You can take the call you’ve been waiting for.
The call that might tell you your number was the prize winner.
You answered the question on the radio. And you won
the sample jar of cream, the blender, you won
the trip to Hawaii.
But in spite of the blender that’s absolutely guaranteed
and the fantastic cream that makes your skin velvet-smooth
you commit suicide with barbiturates.
In spite of having won
or in spite of the radar
you board a Comet 4C
bound for Los Angeles, bound for Honolulu
which the RB-47 reconnaissance plane has since lost track of.
Or you keep waiting for a call that doesn’t come
waiting for the arrival of love in fresh makeup
and they did call you a long time ago
and got that wrong number. Or they are calling you on the phone
and calling and calling
and yes, that’s your number, but you’re not there
you’ve left home
and it’s the police to inform you
that your body has been identified at the station house.

— tr. Jonathan Cohen