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To Pablo Neruda for his Canto General

published by David Rogers on 12/28/16 7:06pm
Posted to: 
Colorado

To Pablo Neruda for his Canto General

By

David Rogers Jr

Pampas of blood, deserts of sorrow.

Your land, Pablo, suffered like

The Forgotten in dictators’

Cells covering your continent,

A land shaped like an arrow

To the heart.

Your land, Pablo, of secrecy

And terror and deep green and

Brown beauty.

It seemed mystical, unreal,

A dream never to enter the heads of

Quiet Americans in Cleveland.

While you fought and bled

We norteamercanos read

With love, and relief,

That we were safe in

Democratic beds that

Satrap demons could not reach.

At times we squirmed at

Our familiar names.

Standard Oil. United Fruit.

Anaconda Mining Company.

You blasted wrath at us

For conformist greed and cruelty.

And forgave our forgotten peasant hearts.

Now, Pablo, we need you.

We did not listen or heed

Your traveler’s tales

Warning of hatred and

Failed magic of tribes

With stone bones and Amazon blood.

The satraps are here.

They clawed out of the pampas

Graves where your words

Buried them.

The pull the Dark Chariot

Of their corpulent Dictator.

We must fight but forgot how.

Soft on televised, digitized

Fractions of democracy

We forgot how to man the barricades,

Shout a poem into the

Mouth of a gun.

Now, Pablo, we need you.

Green ink tears water

My notes of fight poetry.

I will write them and shout them

With your Canto General

In my fist.

It is a poem of love and wrath,

A textbook for memory of the

Pachamama and quiet, strong

Peoples of the Earth.

Now Pablo, we need you.

Send your words to us.

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