From Son to Fatherland

Ay, land of the ever fidgeting flag, red and black,

Hemorrhage heart of the New World.

Ay, land of a million kin,

Houses of tin, hovels of rattling ore

Mediocre rich, mediocre poor.

Tierra sin Troya,

Lacking in both Helen and Hector,

Yet laden with endless masses of Achillean men.

Millions of wailing wretches, sons of their mothers moans.

Polygamous houses upon houses,

A dozen monstrous monuments: gilded gore.

Brothel-born dreamers who borrowed all their passions.

No Bismarck, no Bonaparte,

No golden gondolas in which to sway,

No New York high or Parisian paths which come with age.

Yet covered in countless coarse crops: red beans, red rice,

Red ‘47s, Soviet-fertilized vice,

Red vines strangling the forgotten graves of middling men.

Salamanders shit on your sepulchers, your erected politick!

All your leaders’ arms dug deep in the sandbox, snatching.

Adam Smith would weep,

If he could see his hidden hand this deep.

—Nation, Marx is laughing.

A hundred thousand quarrels: rolling barrels.

A billion infidelities and lies (to thine own self thou was’t never true)—

And yet, a certain something beckons, something sovereign in your soil.

Ay, land which knows no peace above the gravel and grime,

Where mime-men mingle with borrowed dreams,

While the meager mestizos sentenced to drink the mire

Toil and tread, laboring stoutly even after tired,

Working their sore sore sinews soft: as strong

As their forgotten Indian songs.

Ay, unable land,

Only in your earnest earth would I ground my grave, atone my sins.

Bid your red bishop to bury me blind,

His blood robe, blankets for my bare bones.

Etch no epitaph upon the stone,

But engrave the sullen Roman cross, familiar like failure,

And allow your Caribbean cyclones to cover up my common name

Into a tame terra icognita:

Into depths where I can speak dead tongues without a sound.

Let the bishops’ gnarled Latin staff translate

My vulgar language, that the forgotten dead can heed this call.

Let him whisper from the Borrowed Book,

Let him bless me into calm communion with those who rest.

Ay, land of that morbid clime that no winter ever knew, land of

Hot-hearted soldiers that never a cool air gasped before the final breath of dust,

Where were you during the Great War?

Meek men! Permitting the Saxon to run you off the pages like

Scattered lizards rummaging for crevices in the crusted ground,

Scurrying for shelter in the sand!

Why don’t you speak a more native tongue?

But imitate imperial tones where empire there is none?

Why grow luscious fruits when you eat not one?

Exporting even your children, who return taciturn,

Terrified of foreign fame, awed with ought,

Desirous of your dirty discretion.