The Earth is a Satellite of the Moon
Leonel Rugama
Nicaragua
Apollo 2 cost more than Apollo 1.
Apollo 1 cost plenty.
Apollo 3 cost more than Apollo 2.
Apollo 2 cost more than Apollo 1.
Apollo 1 cost plenty.
Apollo 4 cost more than Apollo 3.
Apollo 3 cost more than Apollo 2.
Apollo 2 cost more than Apollo 1.
Apollo 1 cost plenty.
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I watch them climb the wall,
stumble over tarnished coils
under hills scorched in dry heat,
shriveled up like stone. I remember
I jumped a barbed wire fence —
ropes of bristling spikes nailed
against the bark of a tree ―
and found a small wooden cross
tilting on the highway shoulder.
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You can hear the iron men
with spur & muzzle, hooves
clopping harder as they gallop
against gravel, heat like the snort
of an underground animal.
In the vein between the eyebrows
you can hear the pellet piercing
the jaguar pelt of a warrior.
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One day
the apolitical intellectuals
of my country
will be interrogated
by the simplest
of our people.
They will be asked
what they did
when their nation died out
slowly,
like a sweet fire,
small and alone.
No one will ask them
about their dress,
their long siestas
after lunch,
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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.
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Little Cambray Tamales
Nicaragua/El Salvador
Listen to the author read the poem in English and Spanish.
Translated by D.J. Flakoll. From Woman of the River (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989).
(makes 5,000,000 little tamales) – for 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 pious 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
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I believe in my people
who have been exploited
for five hundred years
I believe in their sons
conceived in sorrow and struggle
who suffered under the Pontius Pilates
and were martyrized
sequestered
sacrificed
descended into the hell
of the Media Luna
Some were resurrected
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I Am You Or You Are Me / In Lak'ech
Luis Valdez
United States
You are my other me.
If I do harm to you,
I do harm to myself.
If I love and respect you,
I love and respect myself.
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Like You
El Salvador
From Poema Clandestinos/Clandestine Poems (Solidarity Publications, 1986)
I, like you,
love, life, the sweet charm of things, the celestial
landscape of January days.
Also, my blood boils and I smile for the eyes
that have known the burst of tears.
I think that the world is beautiful, that poetry is like bread, for everyone.
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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.
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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.
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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!
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…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.
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Unfortunate admiral! Your poor America,
your beautiful, hot-blooded, virgin Indian love,
the pearl of your dreams, is now hysterical,
her nerves convulsing and her forehead pale.
A most disastrous spirit rules your land:
where once the tribesmen raised their clubs together,
now there is endless warfare between brothers,
the selfsame races wound and destroy each other.
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I,
poet by trade,
condemned so many times
to be a crow,
would never change places
with the Venus de Milo:
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They use everything they’ve got to putrify a man alive,
sketch in a flash
the ample pallor of the murdered
and lock him up in infinity.
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There is a flower in my cell.
I found it alone in a corner
as if being punished.
It burst the hard floor
of cement and stone.
It broke the taboo
of being born in a cell.
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This is the land of which I sing.
Hoarsely, like the guardabarranco
which at a distance sounds just like cattle lowing,
he builds his nest in holes in rocky canyon walls.
And like the cheerful güis in Nicaragua’s parks and orchards
the cierto-güis which keeps reaping CIERTO-GUIS
or like the guas in Chinandega and Chontales
which sings in the dry fields, announcing rain
thus too my song . . . .
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Never consider yourself
a privileged intellectual, a book-filled head repeating
the same conversation,
a withered doleful thinker.
You were born to thresh stars
and discover in the trees the laughter of the crowd,
you were born brandishing the future,
seeing through eyes, hands, feet, breast, mouth,
foreteller of things to come
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Fray
Clementina Suárez
Honduras
I am a poet,
an army of poets.
And today I want to write a poem —
a whistles poem,
a rifles poem —
to strike them in doorways,
in prison cells,
within the walls of schools.
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Beware beet pickers
Listen carefully
And keep in mind to
Learn about organization.
Students carry on
Proceed without stumbling
This group’s education
Is the basis of progress.
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Dios Madre
Claudia Castro Luna
El Salvador / United States
Behind the counter
tending to a customer
he could see her
skipping and laughing
in the middle of the street
children playing
under the midday sun
soon she would come in
for her almuerzo
then head back out to school
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