No more cold nights sleeping out on the tattered sheet.
This is another poem from Chile called "Cuidadores de Autos"
which means "caretakers of cars," and it describes them.
There's the Spanish word propina in here, which means "tip."
You know, like you give a waiter.
Propina.
It seems like the world's most useless profession
to guard and protect the already safe and secure,
to guide you out of your parking place
as if this were your first time behind the wheel,
as if without their help you would
smash into one car, then another, or collapse
and weep uncontrollably.
That without them to put your peso in the meter,
you would desperately fumble, accidentally fling it down
the grating of a sewer.
There must be 1,000 of these men on the streets of Santiago,
where their symbols of office, a dirty orange rag
and a gray cap.
I even know one man who was training his son
in the profession, a boy of about eight
with a smaller cap and smaller rag.
The father complains how people ignore him, force
him to chase them all the way to the stoplight
for his propina, which is why he employs this little boy, who
was quick on his feet and likes to run.
But I remember one night when we had
dinner at a restaurant near the market we had not
argued that day.
You are happy, and your eyes crinkled at the corners
in a way that makes you even more beautiful.
When we left the restaurant, yours
was the only car still on the block,
and nearby waited one of these men, these caretakers of cars.
But older than most, with a gray cap that looked like something
had been chewing it.
He followed us to the car and with great ceremony
directed you away from the curb with this little orange rag,
peered intently into the dark for any trucks that
might be traveling fast with their lights off.
The world was safe, and the innocent
slept soundly in their beds.
You thanked him, gave him 10 pesos,
and he called you his little daughter, which
pleased and embarrassed you.
The moon was full that night, but the moon here
is not the Northern moon.
The face is another face.
The right eye which I have seen all my life is now the mouth,
and the mouth of the North is now the left eye.
A face with a high forehead.
No chin to speak of.
A leering, stupid sort of face, which presumes to know
but knows nothing.
As you slept, I studied the freckles on your back
until they seemed part of a map--
towns with no roads between them.
Here everything feels reversed.
The fig tree in the backyard was heavy with figs,
and I kept hearing them fall.
First, the brief riffle as one dropped through the leaves,
then a plop like a wet wadded-up sock
as it hit the tiles of the patio, where
it would harden and spoil.
You lay dreaming of houses, solar houses,
and earthquake-proof houses, a house on the ocean,
on a hill above the beach.
A profusion of flowers and light flickering on the white walls,
filling the rooms like water.
And where was I?
Sometimes, I hear sirens during curfew, the high squealing
sirens of the motorcycles, and that night there
were gunshots and the sound of running.
A German newspaper claims that last month 21 houses
were raided in Santiago.
442 political arrests.
We know nothing of it.
Later that night, a Jeep slammed on its brakes.
There was shouting, the sound of someone being beaten.
We hurried outside.
A young man lay in the grass, moaning and holding his head.
He said he had been at a party.
There had been a girl who wore new expensive-looking yellow
boots and pleaded with us not to call the police.
Soon we went back to bed.
Who will protect us from our protectors?
As I lay beside you, I listened to the sound of a man's boots
slowly walking down the street, becoming fainter,
until at last they were lost and grew confused
with the pounding of my heart.