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When, in Leon, with my machine
gun,
I entered the rotten and half-dead house of Dario,
the same one of Alfonso Cortez the crazy man,
I was returned to the poetry of my faraway land.
To the grave of Pablo Neruda,
hiding myself in the skirts of Matilde,
so as not to be arrested,
and with her, arm in arm,
escaping from the cemetery.
Isla Negra brings me to a
strange landscape:
persecuted by the police,
by the seashore, running, we read verses.
Also to the house of Nicanor
Parra:
I went there often with a sackful of other people.
One of the things I remember
is Nicanor Parra
speaking rubbish
on the patio of his house.
He was carving his Christ
and he didn't want to pierce himself in secret.
I remember that he was a disgrace in Isla Negra
like the jokes of the parrots.
Speaking badly about everyone,
one day he climbed a tree
in order to scream
that the human being is small.
It was such realism
that I got tired of visiting his house
(he must have cried).
There was nothing there
besides baked potatoes
and the madness of the old man.
He did not acknowledge the
scaffold,
and the screams did not disturb his dreams;
he was too busy writing verses.
Now I am an officer of the
B.L.I. Simon Bolivar
and I have arrived with the sunset to Leon
in a Soviet jeep, to read poetry against the war. |
