Roque Dalton

The Warrior’s Resting Place 

The dead are getting more restless each day.

They used to be easy
we’d put on stiff collars flowers
praised their names on long lists
shrines of the homeland
remarkable shadows
monstrous marble.

The corpses signed away for posterity
returned to formation
and marched to the beat of our old music.

But not anymore
the dead
have changed.

They get all ironic
they ask questions.

It seems to me they’ve started to realise
they’re becoming the majority!

(trans. by Luis Gonzalez Serrano) 

Roque Dalton

 I wanted 

I wanted to talk about life in all the corners
filled with song I wanted to join a river of words
the dreams and the names what is not said
in the newspapers the agony of the lonely
caught in the folds of the rain
reclaim the bare parables of the lovers and leave them
at the feet of a child’s game
elaborating their sweet daily destruction
I wanted to pronounce the syllables of the people
the songs of their anguish
point out where the heart is lame
to say who alone deserves a shot
in the back to tell of my own country
lay down the exodus of the large
migrations that opened all the paths of the world
of love even dragged over there
by the ditches to talk to you about trains
and my friend who killed himself with another’s knife
of the history of all of the people torn
from the blindness of the myth of reefs
the century that will end with my three sons
of the tongues of the birds and the furious foam
of the great quadrupeds’ stampede
and I wanted to tell you about the Revolution
and about Cuba and the Soviet Union
and about the woman I love because of her eyes
of the smallest storms
and of your lives filled with sunrise
and asking people who saw it who said that
how could it be done I got here
ahead of you
and of all of the things of nature
and of the heart and its testimony
of the last fingerprint before annihilation
of the little animals and of tenderness
I wanted to say yes all that and tell
a lot of the stories I know and were told to me in my time
and all that I learned living in sorrow’s big room
the things that were said by the poets before me
and that it was good to know

And I could not give you more—closed door
of poetry—
than my own headless body in the sand of the ring.

(mexico-havana-san-salvador-prague 1961-1965)

(trans. by Anne Boyer) 

Roque Dalton

Poem of Love

They who widened the Panama Canal
(and were classified “silver roll” and “gold roll”),
they who repaired the Pacific fleet at California bases,
they who rotted in the jails of Guatemala,
Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua *
for being thieves, smugglers, swindlers, for being hungry,
they always suspicious of everything
("permit me to haul you in as a suspect
for hanging out on corners suspiciously, and furthermore
with the pretentious air of being Salvadorian"),
they who packed the bars and brothels of all the ports
and capitals of the region
(“The Blue Cave,” “Hot Pants,” “Happyland”),
the planters of corn deep in foreign jungles,
the kings of cheap porn,
they who no one knows where they come from,
the best artisans of the world,
they who were stitched by bullets crossing the border,
they who died of malaria
or by the sting of scorpions or yellow fever
in the hell of banana plantations,
the drunkards who cried for the national anthem
under a cyclone of the Pacific or northern snows,
the moochers, the beggars, the dope pushers,
guanaco sons of bitches,
they who hardly made it back,
they who had a little more luck,
the eternally undocumented,
the jack-of-all trades, the hustlers, the gluts,
the first the flash a knife,
the sad, the saddest of all,
my people, my brothers.

*Somoza’s era in Nicaragua.

Translated from the Spanish by Zoë Anglesey and Daniel Flores Ascencio.

Roque Dalton

After four hours of torture, the Apache and the other two 

cops threw a bucket of water at the prisoner to wake him up 
and said: "The Colonel has ordered us to tell you you're to be 
given a chance to save your skin. If you guess which of us has 
a glass eye, you'll be spared torture." After passing his gaze 
over the faces of his executioners, the prisoner pointed to 
one of them: "His. His right eye is glass." 

And the astonished cops said, "You're saved! But how did 
you guess? All your buddies missed because the eye is 
American, that is, perfect." "Very simple," said the prisoner, 
feeling he was going to faint again, "it was the only eye that 
looked at me without hatred." 

Of course they continued torturing him.