I'm going to jump up to the next section of the book.
There's some drawings in the book,
so it's organized into these what he calls niches.
And you're not going to be able to see it closely,
but this is a kind of almost like a funeral plot,
or something like that.
And they're little plots, and each one
says the name of a country.
And then on the page, there are these kind of blocks of text
that have a kind of imprisoned feeling to me.
So I'm going to read a few of those.
"From sheds 12 and 13, the paragraphs read and say,
the headlights filled the road.
Everyone cried out for mother and father's love.
And as the doors to the ascent opened, the ballad began again.
For his disappeared love he went from hole
to hole, grave to grave, searching
for the eyes that don't find, from gravestone to gravestone,
from cry to cry.
It went through niches, through shadows, and it went like this.
Araucan niche.
They were found in barracks 13.
They were long black valleys like the others who
disappeared, it was noted.
Southern airplanes plowed the sky,
and as they bombed their cities, they lit up for a second
and dropped.
So it says in barracks on engraved tombs that worn.
In the limestone they erased the remains and all that was left
was the final wound.
Amen.
They all broke into tears.
Amen.
It was tough to watch.
Amen.
USA niche, found in barracks 12.
Northern countries and dispatched
to eat themselves up thanks to their dreams
of special shields, of murderers of Blacks, of domination.
They descended the sky and they called Hiroshima
the country that blazed.
Central country's valleys and Chilean gluttons.
The graves are nights, and everything
is night in the American grave.
They rest in peace like the bison.
It was a Navajo phrase, as it was written, Amen.
Argentinean niche, shed 13, a ship
beneath the country of Peru and above the country of Chile.
From torture to torture, disappearance to extermination,
a hole was left and it was like the aforementioned countries.
And the night had nowhere to fall, and neither did the day.
Country disappeared from the horror behind the barracks.
From there the wind blew across the inexistent pampas.
And as it settled, the massacred faces became visible, Amen.
Tombstone six, white skin is all it says.
Peruvian niche and mountainous regions,
like all those referred to, the barracks and ship
these countries lay the Shining Path in extreme misery.
In planes they rumbled a road of light through the Urubamba,
and the ruined raise their candles.
The groan emerged from chola.
Oh the evil of my Peru, it says.
They're all tombs.
They cried more than the others, and now it's a dream,
and they lie.
It groans.
It's the A of vistas.
Paraguayan niche referred to barracks 13,
another massacre between countries, Chaco wars and La
Plata wars, condominium and suffering,
now lies in its niche surrounded by barbed wire.
Isle and tomb, it says.
I rest for the Guarani Marcos, and the whole song was sung,
it says.
It says, I sing for peace in Paraguay.
I sing for the shot down helicopters,
for the Ypacaraí country who kill with cane.
All of this is ended, the niche says, day, and it bled.
Niche, desert of the Mexican country.
It lies beneath New Mexico.
The Mexican desert first covered the walls with sand,
descended with thoughts, and as it arrived at the plaza,
rulfos and students raise their arms.
It was packs of hounds and massacre.
More managed to climb the steps.
The climb is longing and prayer, it says,
but that's how the image remains.
Mexico 68 lies, the stony ground is the niche, it says.
Neither arms, nor legs, beloved God.
Niche volcanoes from the Guatemalan earth,
this is what we call the Guatemalan tomb number 14,
and it says, dear cornfield of my country,
dear volcanoes of my country, dear blue of my country,
there was no, it reads, need for extermination,
nothing fatal, no murder.
It was dead, corn and lava.
The date stayed in Mayan, and the glow of those cornfields
was never known.
No one knows like Peru, it cried.
Dear cornfield, dear craters, it rests.
Tomb 20, country of Cuba and islands, malecón and islands.
Described, one sees, mountains and mountain ranges.
Are they there?
Lakes and lacustrine, are they there?
Threads and spinners, are they there?
Indians and Siboneyes, are they there?
Blockade and blocked, are they there?
The muddy old bridge, Havana, and reefs, are they there?
They read and stopped.
From the whole scene the cry fell and the sound,
the beloved island died.
The sound, USA, Cuba, and Marti's country, dead in peace,
like the bison in the grass.
28, oh, don't leave, he groans.
Andean tomb of the countries.
I'm going away.
Everything dies, everything dies sucking itself.
There were as many mountains as there now
are clouds, gray clouds, blacker and graying, rising in the sky,
climbing and evaporating.
Those are the mountains, holes in all the countries,
expanded downwards in the torrent of their love
was the rain.
The mountain rains, says my Andean darling, don't go.
Don't go, she says."
This is the last page of the book.
"Do you remember, Chilean, when you were first
abandoned as a boy?
Yes, he says.
Do you remember the second time when you were about 20?
Yes, he says.
Do you know, Chilean and pigeon, that we are dead?
Yes, he says.
Do you remember your first poem?
Yes, he says.
He says yes, yes, yes.
[VOCALIZING]
The night sings, sings, sings.
She sings, sings beneath the Earth,
up here now, rise anew in the dead little countries.
Chileans, Karatekas, somozas, and traitors, rise up
and deliver again, your flight and your song.
It's only because of you, brother, that it flies,
sings, and takes shape.
Yes, return it to this one, the most cheerful,
and the most poet disappeared from evil.
Pigeon in love.
Yes, he says."