The End of Power
Si somos americanos
Si somos americanos*
By Rolando Alarcón
Si somos americanos,
somos hermanos señores,
tenemos las mismas flores,
tenemos las mismas manos.
Si somos americanos,
seremos buenos vecinos,
compartiremos el trigo,
seremos buenos hermanos.
`
Bailaremos marinera,
resbalosa, huayno y son.
Si somos americanos,
seremos una canción.
Si somos americanos,
no miraremos fronteras,
cuidaremos las semillas,
tiraremos las banderas.
Si somos americanos,
seremos todos iguales,
el blanco, el mestizo, el indio
y el negro son como tales
* in Spanish, capitalization is often different than in English.
II
If We Are Americans
If we are Americans
We’re family my friends,
We’ve the same flowers,
and the same hands.
We dance the marinera,
resbalosa, huayano and son,
When we are Americans
We are a song.
If we are Americans
there are no borders
we care for seeds,
not a nation’s flags.
If we are Americans
we are all the same,
White, indigenous, mixed,
and black are one.
III
I have taken some little translation liberties like introducing gender neutrality because I feel these are essential and inevitable to t translation appropriate to the times. Just as when we read we interpret and and translate and recreate and modify word symbols in our mind. What, for example, is a cow? Whch one, what color, breed, something else entirely? The reader decides. Among the folk songs of the Americas there are many that express the feeling of discrimination and isolation from the dominant culture… like Angelitos Negros, where the poet asks why there are no black cherubs or angels.
Alarcón became a music teacher in the 70s, and was a communist, revolutionary, homosexual, and widely acclaimed poet folk singer associated with wold famous folk groups. His songs are often accompanied by altiplano flute and charango, a small guitar often built on an armadillo shell. The huayano is an altiplano ONE- two- three step dance. The son is a generic word for Mexican folk dance.
Chileans are notorious as poets, miners, and engineers who must build to withstand recurring earthquakes. The first American woman Nobel laureate was Gabriela Mistral Mistral lived in Valle del Elqui, a long remote Andes valley where the high air is so clear it has attracted the world’s biggest collection of international observatories. Neruda is another Nobel laureate poet. Rolando Alarcón was born in Sewell, Chile, an old High Andes company owned mining town, at El Teniente Mine; it is still the largest underground mine in the world ; It operates within one mountain on multiple levels; the rock crusher, mill, flotation process, kitchen and restaurant are interconnected by 2500 km of two lane highways in huge air washed tunnels, with traffic lights; miners enter and leave by train on the lower level.
The Americas are home to lots of deep or fascinating cultural stuff; like some of my mother in law’s Gajardo family that includes the first woman engineer in the Americas, Justicia Espada… Justice Sword — her parents refused to give their children family names. The link includes the names of her siblings. Perhaps those wierd names made them eccentric; see Gajardo’s Moon post on this blog.
I think this old song is timely because it enunciates some current attitudes of many pan-american and pan-african indigenous peoples; and those of many of the world’s transnational millennials, who want to live like one-world citizens. Further, perhaps there is some sort of connection between the sentiments expressed in the folk poem, and those of that stunning political pyromaniac, The Bern, and with those of Moisés Naím, in The End of Power) also reviewed on this blog. .
Little Things
POSTED ON JULY 24, 2016 UPDATED ON JULY 24, 2016
It’s not the Persian carpet, the house , car or jewels,
but the little things that whisper or suggest
even when they’re silent what I little know,
of where, when, why, who or even what about her life gone by:
Her medicine chest, kitchen and pantry, bedsheets and closets;
eleven hard drives in a plastic ziplock — meticulously destroyed.
An unspent bullet in still stale air and cluttered dark.
A crochet hook, sewing kit, items for recycling.
Old photographs, TP and paper towels;
Bank statements, letters, perfume, and lotions,
Detergents, linens, a dog dish and bird feeder– half full.
A mail box, still alive, when emptied, cries out
for a little more, until rewarded with delicious junk mail and collection letters.
Pills, notions, lotions, purses, shoes, clothes,
and a hundred hand written pages from a lined spiral notebook
filled with fear and voices speaking in silent audibles.
Dry plants, and flower beds, disconnected sprinklers, old hoses and garden tools.
Cruel little things speak in their sharp edged forked foreign tongue.
Sad little things that hint of little pleasures, big plans, and hope of love.
I follow the footpaths through the underbrush of her tangled troubled life.
I walk there barefoot aware and wary of thorns, adders, asps, and broken glass.
The little things leave weeping little cuts that still wait and want to heal.