Like You
Like you I
love love, life, the sweet smell
of things, the sky-blue
landscape of January days.
And my blood boils up
and I laugh through eyes
that have become the buds of tears.
I believe the world is beautiful
and that poetry, like bread, is for everyone.
And that my veins don't end in me
but in the unanimous blood
of those who struggle for life,
love,
little things,
landscape and read,
the poetry of everyone.
El Salvador Will Be
El Salvador will be a pretty
and (without exaggeration) serious country
when working class and peasantry
fertilize and comb and talc it
cure the historical hangover
clean it up reconstruct it
and get it going.
The problem is that today El Salvador
has a thousand rough edges and hundred thousand pitfalls
about five hundred thousand calluses and some blisters
cancers rashes dandruff filthiness
ulcers fractures fevers bad odors.
You have to round it off with a little machete
sandpaper lathe turpentine penicillin
sitz-baths kisses and gunpowder.
translated by Jack Hirschman
_________________
Roque Dalton
Clandestine Poems
introduction by Margaret Randall
Solidarity Publications, 1984
