WEBVTT

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But I'll finish with this poem.

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This will be the last one.

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In January of
1991, I was honored

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to have some poems published
in a newspaper in El

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Salvador called Diario Latino.

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Diario Latino is an
opposition newspaper.

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It stands in opposition to the
military, the death squads,

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the government there
responsible for the deaths

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of tens of thousands of people
over the last decade or so,

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funded in large part
by the United States,

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sometimes to the tune of more
than a million dollars a day.

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So these are brave
people, and I was

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honored to have the poems
appear in their newspaper.

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A month later, in
February of 1991,

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Diario Latino was
burned to the ground.

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And everybody knew who did it.

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Slowly, the newspaper began
to rebuild, literally a page

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at a time, until
finally, a year later,

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Diario Latino was
back to full strength.

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And in February of 1992,
the first anniversary

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of the fire, the following poem
was published in Diario Latino.

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It's a tribute to Diario
Latino, of course,

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and the people who work there.

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Many of the details in the
poem are taken from a letter

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that I received from a friend
of mine down in El Salvador.

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And yet, the poem
goes beyond that.

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It's also a tribute
to people anywhere

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who have the courage to
speak, and whose voices

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rise above the flames.

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The poem is called "When
Songs Become Water"

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for Diario Latino,
El Salvador, 1991.

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"Where dubbed commercials
sell the tobacco and alcohol

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of a far winter metropolis,
where the lungs of night

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cough artillery shots
into the ears of sleep,

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where strikers with howls stiff
on their faces and warnings

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pinned to their shirts are
harvested from garbage heaps,

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where olive uniforms
keep watch over the plaza

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from a nest of rifle
eyes and sandbags,

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where the government
party campaigns,

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chanting through loudspeakers
that this country will

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be the burial
ground of the reds,

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there, the newsprint
of mutiny is

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as medicine on the fingertips.

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And the beat of the
press-printing mutiny

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is like the pounding of
tortillas in the hands.

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When the beat of the press is
like the pounding of tortillas,

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and the newsprint is
medicine on the fingertips,

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come the men with
faces wiped away

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by the hood, who smother
the mouth of witness night,

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shaking the gasoline
can across the floor,

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then scattering in a dark
orange eruption of windows,

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leaving the paper to
wrinkle, gray in the heat.

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Where the faces wiped
away by the hood are known

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by the breath of gasoline
on their clothes,

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and paper wrinkles gray as the
skin of incarcerated talkers,

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another army helicopter
plunges from the sky

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with blades burning like
the wings of a gargoyle.

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The tortilla and medicine
words are smuggled in shawls.

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The newspapers are hoarded
like bundles of letters

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from the missing.

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The poems become songs, and the
songs become water streaming

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through the arteries of the
Earth, where others at the well

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will cool the sweat in their
hair, and begin to think."

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Thank you very much.

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[APPLAUSE]

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