Selected Poems and Literary Works
From A Dog’s Luck
I remember one afternoon
by the cherry tree
that was planted
in the patio of the old house,
an old uncle of mine
crying piteously
because of the death of his dog.
A long time afterwards, I
found out
that on that day many people
had died in the city,
murdered by cold
and hunger.
But the dearest thing
my uncle had, they say,
was his animal,
a three-year-old police dog
that went everywhere
with him.
My uncle died soon after
of deep grief,
and his pain must have been
genuine and sincere
for it to have burned so deeply.
I remember him
by the old cherry tree,
his weeping singing
in the tree of his eyes.
And when much later I
learned
that on that day so many people
had died,
young and naïve as I was,
I asked my aunts,
then pure and rich,
if the dog was worth more tears
than so many dead people.
I remember their anger,
as if I had slapped
the memory of their brother.
Through many Julys
I remembered with confusion
that bitter family incident.
I tried to put it
out of my mind forever.
I perhaps would have
if not for today
when I read in the newspaper
that a man was beaten to death
for stealing food
from a well-fed police dog.
Otto René Castillo
Guatemala
Reprinted from Rediscovering America.
Tamales from Cambray
To Eduardo and Helena who asked me for a Salvadoran recipe.
Two pounds of mestizo dough
half a pound of Guachupin loin
cooked and finely ground
a little box of Sister of Charity raisins
two spoonfuls of Malinche milk
one cup of seething water
lightly fried conquistador helmets
three Jesuit onions
a purse of multinational gold
two dragon’s teeth
a big presidential carrot
two spoonfuls of informers
Panchimalco Indian lard
two ministerial tomatoes
half a cup of television sugar
two drops of volcano lava
seven pito leaves
(don’t be evil-minded it is sleep inducing)
put it all to simmer
on a low heat
for five hundred years
and you’ll see what a flavor!
Claribel Alegría
Nicaragua/El Salvador
Reprinted from Rediscovering America.
Like You
Like you I
love love, life, the sweet smell
of things, the sky-
blue landscape of January days.
And my blood boils up
and I laugh through eyes
that have known the buds of tears.
I believe the world is beautiful
and that poetry, like bread, is for everyone.
And that my veins don’t end in me
but in the unanimous blood
of those who struggle for life,
love,
little things,
landscape and bread,
the poetry of everyone.
Roque Dalton
El Salvador
Reprinted from Rediscovering America.
From We Indians Have No Childhood
“While my father was in jail, the rich land-owners came, and since no one knew Spanish, they frightened us. And they told the campesinos to either leave, or stay as wage earners, because the land was theirs. Then their gunmen threatened to chase us out, and broke everything because all we had was clay pots. When my father returned [from jail] he decided to work even harder defending his community, and even to give his life for it. He continued making trips to the capital. At that time we still believed that only the large landowners were our enemies. We didn’t realize that, in fact, it was all the rich who persecuted us campesinos.”
Rigoberta Menchú
Guatemala
Reprinted from Rediscovering America.
From America en el idioma de la memoria
V.
Who are we?
Who are these men, these women without language, scorned for their color
for their skins, their feathers, and their adornments?
So we would not read other than their sacred writings
They burned ours in bonfires
Our history, our poetry, the records of our
people
They filled the sockets of our eyes with smoke
They filled our intestines with tears
They burned our writings, carefully painted by the scribes
They burned the history that made us who we were
Oh, how the old wailed in the plazas
seeing the names of their ancestors burn in the flames
Ah long night sad night of the ashes
A night in that we were left without hands, without language,
without memory
converted into slaves, sleepwalkers.
Gioconda Belli
Nicaragua
Reprinted from Rediscovering America.
From Even Beneath This Bitterness
The statistics say: for every 80,000 officers of the law
there is one doctor in Guatemala.
Then understand the misery of my country,
and my pain and everyone’s pain.
If when I say: Bread!
they say
shut up!
and when I say: Liberty!
they say
Die!
But I don’t shut up and I don’t die.
I live
and fight, maddening
those who rule my country.
For if I live
I fight,
and if I fight
I contribute to the dawn.
And so victory is born
even in the bitterest hours.
Otto Rene Castillo
Guatemala
Click here to read the complete poem .
From Cuzcatlán
…Emiliano kept the red handkerchief, the one he used to dry his tears, in his back pocket. He swore he’d never go back to work at the mill. And his baby daughter would never work in the mills either…
“We will not be slaves of death,” he says, not to his daughter, but as one would let loose a flock of butterflies. Once men like Emiliano had been poets and sages. Then they became slaves and serfs. In the last century they had become wage earners, but their living conditions were those of slaves.
Manlio Argueta
El Salvador
Reprinted from Rediscovering America.
Click here to read an extended excerpt.
