The Invasion of Grenada
W. D. Ehrhart
I didn’t want a monument,
not even one as sober as that
vast black wall of broken lives.
I didn’t want a postage stamp.
I didn’t want a road beside the Delaware
River with a sign proclaiming:
“Vietnam Veterans Memorial Highway.”
What I wanted was a simple recognition
of the limits of our power as a nation
to inflict our will on others.
What I wanted was an understanding
that the world is neither black-and-white
nor ours.
What I wanted
was an end to monuments.
Christmas
Steve Hassett
The Hessian in his last letter home said in part:
“They are all rebels here who will not stand to fight
But each time fade before us
As water into sand…”
The children beg in their rude hamlets,
The women stare with hate,
The men flee into the barrens at our approach
To lay in ambush.
Some talk of desertion…
Were it not for the hatred they bear us, more would do so.
There is no glory here.
Tell Hals he must evade the Prince’s levy
Through exile or deformity.
Winter is hard upon us.
On the morrow we enter Trenton.
There we rest till the New Year.
Os Invasores
Nablo Neruda
Vieram.
Os que arrasaram
antes a Nicarágua.
Os que roubaram o Texas.
Os que humilharam Valparaiso.
Os que com garras sujas
apertam a garganta
de Porto Rico.
À Coréia chegaram.
Chegaram.
Com napalm e com dólares,
com destruição, com sangue,
com cinzas e lágrimas.
Com a morte.
Chegaram.
à mãe e ao menino
queimaram vivos na aldeia.
À escola florida
dirigiram
seu petróleo ardendo.
Para destruir as vidas e a vida.
Para buscar desde o ar
até o último
pastor nas montanhas
e matá-lo.
Para cercear os seios
da radiante guerrilheira.
Para matar prisioneiros em seus leitos.
Chegaram.
E súbito não houve senão morte.
Fumaça, cinzas, sangue, morte.
Con napalm y dólares,
destrucción, sangre,
cenizas, lágrimas.
Con muerte.
Con napalm y dólares
Roque Dalton
Vinieron.
Buscando desde el aire
incluso al último pastor
de las montañas
para matarlo.
Para arrancar los pechos
de la guerrillera
que les disparó
con ojos brillantes.
Para matar presos en sus camas
y quemar escuelas,
iglesias, hospitales,
casas de campesinos.
Para asesinar niños
mientras jugaban
con balas de goma
que les daban los soldados
norteamericanos.
Para destruir el arroz
y el maíz,
para envenenar los ríos
y los pozos.
Para que no quedara
nada.
Y de repente
no había nada más que muerte.
The United Fruit Company
Nablo Neruda
When the trumpet sounded, it was
all prepared on the earth,
the Jehovah parcelled out the earth
to Coca Cola, Inc., Anaconda
Ford Motors, and other entities:
The Fruit Company, Inc.
reserved for itself the most succulent,
the central coast of my own land,
the delicate waist of America.
It rechristened its territories
as the ’Banana Republics’
and over the sleeping dead,
over the restless heroes
who brought about the greatness, the liberty and the flags,
it established the comic opera:
abolished the independencies,
presented crowns of Caesar,
unsheathed envy, attracted
the dictatorship of the flies,
Trujillo flies, Tacho flies,
Carias flies, Martinez flies,
Ubico flies, damp flies
of modest blood and marmalade,
drunken flies who zoom
over the ordinary graves,
circus flies, wise flies
well trained in tyranny.
Among the blood-thirsty flies
the Fruit Company lands its ships,
taking off the coffee and the fruit;
the treasure of our submerged
territories flow as though
on plates into the ships.
Meanwhile Indians are falling
into the sugared chasms
of the harbours, wrapped
for burials in the mist of the dawn:
a body rolls, a thing
that has no name, a fallen cipher,
a cluster of the dead fruit
thrown down on the dump.
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