The Day Neruda Died

 

Just a few days after the

coup d’état, Poetry died in a house

nestled in the mountains of Santiago.

 

Twenty years later only,

they buried his body there,

in Isla Negra, according to his last

 

will and desire, close

to his home harboring

on a dune where blue waves

 

scour Humboldt’s icy

currents. Surrounded by

all things maritime, ships in

 

bottles, maps, beloved

figureheads, that he collected

bulimically, a few steps away from

 

his very bedroom with a

tin-plate roof that reminded him of

his childhood in the Southern town of

 

Temuco lashed by harsh winds and

rain where he spent endless hours penning lines

enchanted by the falling drops on the tin rooftops

 

in the arms of the mighty Andes.

The day he died, five-hundred, maybe

six-hundred young men stood there in front of

 

Pablo’s house despite the hundreds of

Pinochet’s secret agents taking snapshots. When

the coffin left all of them raised their hand to the sky,

 

singing the Internationale. Everybody knew that

that very evening somebody would have knocked at

their doors, leading them away to Dawson Island as political

 

prisoners—to never return. This did not prevent them.

Nobody will prevent poetry from living on. Neither regimes

nor politics and, not even Death dancing his last Chilean Totentanz

 

amid rustling red leaves on an Autumn day of 1973. Pablo es aún vivo.*

 

*Pablo is still alive

 

 

 

The Birds Have Gone

 

The birds have all gone.

They gathered to watch

the Nightingale lie

 

motionless on the

ground and fled to mourn.

The country is so silent now.

 

I hold you in my hands.

Your cold feathers will be my shield.

Your chant will be my weapon.

 

Rest here.

This land will always be your land

and I will sing your songs forever.

 

 

(for Pete Seeger)

 

 

 

In Che’s Heavy-Duty Boots

 

I did dream of you Latin America,

unknown land of my spirit,

as I follow the trail that Poderosa –

the Mighty One – left along your

 

backbone: St. Martín, Bariloche,

the pampas and the deserts.

I want to tread your soil and your

soul penniless, a motorcycle in

 

my heart wearing Che’s unlaced heavy-

duty boots. The taste of brewed

yerba mate in the mouth will last long,

as the poverty of people filling my eyes.

 

There is Chile. I’ll pass by as a busy

pilgrim along Neruda’s door. I

won’t knock but I will carry his

words in my backpack. And, I too will

 

spend some days in leper-hospitals

to recall that poets and revolutionaries

must always put their fingers in the wounds

to be able to learn how to be sufferers.