From Puerto Rico we move to Chile.
And this is a poem from the previous book, Trumpets
From the Islands of Their Eviction.
I worked for a while as a radio journalist.
One of the things that I did was a documentary
on the seventh anniversary of the coup in Chile.
And that's where a lot of the information in this poem
comes from-- interviews with people who were there.
The context for this poem is the 1973 military coup in Chile
that overthrew the elected Marxist president, Salvador
Allende, and instituted a junta, which slaughtered
as many as 30,000 people in the months
following the coup, many of them in the soccer
stadiums of Santiago de Chile.
One such person was Victor Jara.
Victor Jara was a singer, songwriter, composer,
guitarist, poet, an activist, and a symbol
for the people of Chile-- one of the leaders of the new song
movement in Chile.
He was publicly executed as an example.
And yet what the junta found out, in this case,
was that sometimes an idea is very hard to kill.
The poem is called "The Firing Squad is Singing in Chile."
"It was years ago, at the moment of the coup,
that the military arrested Victor Jara, alleged communist,
a singer.
They took him to the stadium where
thousands of the suspected stood waiting for a bullet, where
skulls leaked in interrogation rooms like earthenware pots,
spilling their wine.
He sang for them, and they, neck-bruised,
heartbeat drumming in the forehead, fear-eyed they,
they sang.
And he sang, sang after the gun butts fractured his hands
to stop the guitar.
Sang though they pried the tongue from his head,
so that a mouth cavern of red was his song.
Sang till the guards pointed metallic snouts
and punctured his chest with machine guns iron insect sting.
There were thousands.
And each one had a wake in the mouth
for a dead singer, a quiet between sorrowful teeth
for a mutilated song.
And the military made laws.
They banned the songs--
"Laborers Prayer," and "The Child of the Plow,"
"Winds of the People," and "Song of the Fallen--"
document stamp subversive in the hundreds.
They banned the armadillo shell charango, the quena
flute in its condor god throat, the bombo drum of Mapuche
ritual, infected by communists-- incinerated, subversive.
They banned the mention of Victor Jara's name--
a repented subversive.
These are the junta's policies-- bureaucrats
proofreading music sheets, police escorting
those who mispronounce their lyrics to shock batons
and spotlights in a humid room.
The army in twos and threes on street corners,
leaning on rifles, a vigil of cigarettes,
listening for years.
And years later, exiles in cafes sing.
Smuggled tape recordings sing.
Nightwatchmen, late in warehouses, sing.
Labor camp prisoners, anally raped, cry and sing.
The wives and mothers of the disappeared in protest sing.
[SPANISH] assembling rifles in a clandestine basement sing.
As if a butchered tongue could stop Chile from singing.
Generals, constipated with blood, are overhearing it.
The condemned in a row were singing,
singing with the furious chorus of the firing squad."
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.