Martin Espada

The Meaning of the Shovel

BY MARTÍN ESPADA
—Barrio René Cisneros Managua, Nicaragua, June-July
1982

This was the dictator’s land

before the revolution.
Now the dictator is exiled to necropolis,
his army brooding in camps on the border,
and the congregation of the landless
stipples the earth with a thousand shacks,
every weatherbeaten carpenter
planting a fistful of nails.

Here I dig latrines. I dig because last week

I saw a funeral in the streets of Managua,
the coffin swaddled in a red and black flag,
hoisted by a procession so silent
that even their feet seemed
to leave no sound on the gravel.
He was eighteen, with the border patrol,
when a sharpshooter from the dictator’s army
took aim at the back of his head.

I dig because yesterday

I saw four walls of photographs:
the faces of volunteers
in high school uniforms
who taught campesinos to read,
bringing an alphabet
sandwiched in notebooks
to places where the mist never rises
from the trees. All dead,
by malaria or the greedy river
or the dictator’s army
swarming the illiterate villages
like a sky full of corn-plundering birds.

I dig because today, in this barrio

without plumbing, I saw a woman
wearing a yellow dress
climb into a barrel of water
to wash herself and the dress
at the same time,
her cupped hands spilling.

I dig because today I stopped digging

to drink an orange soda. In a country
with no glass, the boy kept the treasured bottle
and poured the liquid into a plastic bag
full of ice, then poked a hole with a straw.

I dig because today my shovel

struck a clay bowl centuries old,
the art of ancient fingers
moist with this same earth,
perfect but for one crack in the lip.

I dig because I have hauled garbage

and pumped gas and cut paper
and sold encyclopedias door to door.
I dig, digging until the passport
in my back pocket saturates with dirt,
because here I work for nothing
and for everything.
Martin Espada, “The Meaning of the Shovel” from Imagine the Angels of Bread.
Copyright © 1996 by Martin Espada. Reprinted with the permission of W. W.
Norton & Company, Inc. This selection may not be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior
written permission of the publisher.

Source: Imagine the Angels of Bread (W. W. Norton and Company Inc., 1996)
En la Calle San Sebastián
BY MARTÍN ESPADA
Viejo San Juan, Puerto Rico, 1998

Here in a bar on the street of the saint

en la calle San Sebastián,
a dancer in white with a red red scarf
en la calle San Sebastián,
calls to the gods who were freed by slaves
en la calle San Sebastián,
and his bronze face is a lantern of sweat
en la calle San Sebastián,
and hands smack congas like flies in the field
en la calle San Sebastián,
and remember the beat of packing crates
en la calle San Sebastián,
from the days when overseers banished the drum
en la calle San Sebastián,
and trumpets screech like parrots of gold
en la calle San Sebastián,
trumpets that herald the end of the war
en la calle San Sebastián,
as soldiers toss rifles on cobblestone
en la calle San Sebastián,
and the saint himself snaps an arrow in half
en la calle San Sebastián,
then lost grandfathers and fathers appear
en la calle San Sebastián,
fingers tugging my steel-wool beard
en la calle San Sebastián,
whispering your beard is gray
en la calle San Sebastián,
spilling their rum across the table
en la calle San Sebastián,
till cousins lead them away to bed
en la calle San Sebastián,
and the dancer in white with a face of bronze
en la calle San Sebastián,
shakes rain from his hair like the god of storms
en la calle San Sebastián,
and sings for the blood that drums in the chest
en la calle San Sebastián,
and praises the blood that beats in the hands
en la calle San Sebastián,
en la calle San Sebastián.

“En la calle San Sebastián,” from Alabanza by Martín Espada. Copyright © 2003
by Martin Espada. Used by permission of W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.Source:
Alabanza: New and Selected Poems 1982-2002 (W. W. Norton and Company
Inc., 2003)
Cesar Vallejo

Miguel
BY CÉSAR VALLEJO
TRANSLATED BY DON PATERSON

Read the translator's notes

I'm sitting here on the old patio
beside your absence. It is a black well.
We'd be playing, now. . . I can hear Mama yell
"Boys! Calm down!" We'd laugh, and off I'd go
to hide where you'd never look. . . under the stairs,
in the hall, the attic. . . Then you'd do the same.
Miguel, we were too good at that game.
Everything would always end in tears.

No one was laughing on that August night

you went to hide away again, so late
it was almost dawn. But now your brother's through
with this hunting and hunting and never finding you.
The shadows crowd him. Miguel, will you hurry
and show yourself? Mama will only worry.
Source: Poetry (April 2008).

Poems taken from: www.poetryfoundation