Well, I only read two more.
So I don't have to--
I mean, we're not here for long.
This is kind of long, so I read it only in English.
Let me see, [INAUDIBLE] here.
This is my last book.
And this is a long poem that is divided in nine sections.
And it's all like a poetic autobiography.
It's all my love for poetry, how I have begin chasing poetry
since I was a little girl.
Then I left home, you know.
Then I came to the United States to learn another language.
Then I was in love.
Then I saw my mentor.
Well, everything, you know?
And then, I was chasing poetry, chasing poetry, and poetry
always escaping, always escaping me.
Until, at the very end, she comes back
like little butterfly.
And I don't need her anymore, and I kiss her away.
And that is called--
and that is called "The Crow's Eye."
"I am the crow's eye--" This is one of the sections.
And in this section is where I am
seeing all the terrible scenes that I
have witnessed in my lifetime.
"I am the crows eye, the persistent eye scanning
fugitive instance of my time.
I dominate this space with my wings,
dominate the time granted me, the brief bowstring tensing
between birth and death.
The past is my time.
I am the arrow triggered by the past.
I must recover it, run through memories with my eyes.
Izalco in the distance, the smoke
boiling up from the crater, the volcano belching,
flaming, belching.
It's spewing boulders from it's maw,
orange-red rocks rolling down his flanks,
leaping, thundering down the slope
while the volcano weeps ashes.
And I, avoiding the smoke, detour to the plaza.
A fine rain of ashes with cotton tunics crammed into the plaza.
They are the men of Izalco and their sons,
wiping their faces with kerchiefs,
traca-traca-trac the stammerer.
The tunics crumple.
Dozens, hundreds of tunics falling, writhing,
remaining immobile.
Some are still walking, avoiding the cadavers
waiting their turn, walking on tiptoe
to avoid stumbling against the dead.
A boy, hand-in-hand with his father,
a child who doesn't understand and gazes wide-eyed.
I beat my wings and fly away.
Fly away.
The poet's sob reaches me.
His unmistakable voice, Spain, take this chalice from my lips.
And I am in Guernica in Bilbao, Madrid.
I fly over the ruins of Guernica.
Mothers shrieking, dust rising from the ruins,
dust like ashes, chimneys in Auschwitz,
in Belsen, in Buchenwald, vomiting ashes, black smoke
and the ashes of Jews who burn and are consumed.
Years, decades of ashes clinging to the faces,
to the polished autos of the Nazis
who seek in vain to immolate a people, and like a flower,
wear the death's head in their lapels.
Why should I still care for this planet?
The era of progress was born in Hiroshima,
with the atomic bomb in Hiroshima,
with the orange mushroom flowering
in a thousandths of a second, leaving
the shadows of its victims engraved on the remaining
walls.
Thousands of dead in Hiroshima.
Thousands and thousands of living beings
transformed into ashes, into spirals of ash,
into flames discharging in the wind.
The kingdom of death here on Earth,
the dull droning of death, one 6th of August, in the morning.
I fly aimlessly.
The small Vietnamese girl, enwrapped in flames.
I fly higher, waiting.
Jews persecuting Palestinians, Serbs decimating Muslims,
piles of cadavers blocking the roads in Rwanda,
tribal drums tam-tamming.
I alight on a tree.
The forest is gone.
A few rachitic trees survive.
An acid rain falls on the trees, poisons
rivers, poisons the seas.
The Earth is ill.
I scan the horizon.
Fugitive rays of hope, of love, of courage, contagious rays
keep sparkling despite the rain.
The Revolution of Carnation in Lisbon,
of students in Cuba, in Paris, Nicaragua, the lone Chinaman
with briefcase confronting the column of tanks in Peking,
the Beatles, their songs, John Lennon preaching,
make love, not war.
I start the return flight.
Nothing has changed.
Nothing.
The squadrons of death, bombardments, misery.
Tlatelolco, Sumpul, expendable children.
My eyes cloud over.
The landscaped clouds, massacres in El Mozote,
in Tenancingo in Wiwilí.
The dust of your streets, Tenancingo, into an exhalation
of death has turned.
Where have all the flowers gone?"
[APPLAUSE]