Hispanic Heritage

Godzilla in Mexico

by Roberto Bolañov

Hear me, my son: bombs were falling
over Mexico City
but no one noticed. The air spread poison through
the streets and open windows.
You’d just finished breakfast and were watching
cartoons on TV.
I was reading in the next room
when I knew we were going to die.
Despite the dizziness and nausea I dragged myself
to the kitchen and found you on the floor.
We hugged. You asked what was happening
and I didn’t tell you we were on death’s telethon
but I whispered: we are going on a journey,
you and I, together, don’t be afraid.
When it left, death didn’t even
close our eyes.
What are we? you asked a week a year later,
ants, bees, wrong numbers
in the big spoiled soup of chance?
We’re human beings, my son, nearly birds,
public heroes and secrets.

Prayer to a Farm Worker
by Victor Jara 

Rise up and look at the mountain, from
where the wind, the sun, the water arrive.
Thou, who determines the course of
rivers, thou who scatters the flight of
your soul.
Rise up. Look at your hands. Join
hands with your brothers, together
in blood we go. Now is the time that
can be tomorrow. Tomorrow.
Deliver us from the men of
misery. Take us to your kingdom of justice and
justice. Blow like the wind the gorge’s flower.
Clean the fire
in the barrel of my gun.
Thy will be done
Here on Earth. Give us your strength and
your courage in combat.
Blow like the wind the field’s daffodil.
Clean fire in the barrel of my gun.

Rise up and look at your hands. Join
hands with your brothers, together
in blood we live,
now and at the hour of
our death. Amen. We live. Amen.

Translated by Mariela Griffor

The Chair
by Fayad Jamís 

On the chair a favorite book a dirty shirt
a glass full of noise and thirst
or a beach where dolphins of smoke
are meditating
Its wood has rested my bones
insubstantial air
international politics love
I’m sick of traveling

In this room which the Queen of England has never visited
in this room which groans like a lurching boat
while morning wind lashes the black spires of churches
I feel only dust ground down by light

Chair of silence of joy of dark wood
Electric chair
where every night my soul is burnt to ash
under the blind stare of the electric bulb.

Translated by Kathleen Weaver

To See Him Again
by Gabriela Mistral 

And never, never again?
Not on nights packed with a few stars,
or in mornings’ first slender sun
or afternoons sacrificed to afternoons?

Or at the edge of a pale road
that surrounds the farm fields,
or a rim of a trembling fountain,
whitened by a moon?

Or beneath the forest’s lush poplars
where, yelling at him,
I was overtaken by the night?
Not in the grotto that returns
the echo of my words?

No. To see him again—
it does not matter where—
in heaven’s dead water
or inside the boiling hole
or still moon or in bloodless fright!

To be with him.
To be every springtime and winter,
united in one painted knot
around his bloody neck!

Translated by Mariela Griffor