Guatemala

I sit with my drink in the gloomy cantina,
Climbing volcanoes in my mind,
Thinking of Pedro de Alvarado, crushed to death beneath his horse,
Weary in the end of so much conquest and glory,
Disappointed with the plunder, arraigned by his own people,
Maddened into ever greater brutality.
He ruled this land as his personal fiefdom,
Desperate for adventure and wealth,
Enslaving and abusing the natives without mercy,
Crushing their rebellions with savage repression.
Was his God the same as ours?
And still the people eat shit and stones,
And are scorned and tortured for their pains,
And cast into unmarked graves without hesitation.
That is the way things are done.
The rich, after all, have their interests to protect;
To let a few peasants and troublemakers spoil the fun
Would be bad for business, bad for everyone.
And the bodies of the poor, at least, make excellent manure,
So their lives serve some purpose after all.

On the city streets rat-children scavenge,
Begging, thieving, selling their bodies for a few coins,
Numbing the hunger and despair with drugs,
Fleeing the guns and clubs of the police
Who beat and kill them as vermin,
And torture them with glee.
In air-conditioned shopping malls elegant ladies
Sip coffee and swap frivolities,
And crystal pyramids soar above slums.
On the outskirts stand the earthen mounds
Of Kaminaljuyu, which have yielded
A few nobles in their fineries, covered in cinnabar
And girt by human sacrifices and treasures,
Jade masks and fine pottery, quartz crystals and obsidian,
The stingray spines they used to draw their own blood,
Piercing penis, ears and tongue
To summon and placate the gods.

Why should the poor learn to read and write,
Just to read the lies in newspapers and books?
Better that they die in ignorance,
Educated by the boots and bullets of soldiers.
Once their forbears ruled this land with heaven’s blessing;
Now bats possess their ruined cities
While flocks of parakeets wheel around,
And howler monkeys holler across the treetops,
As dawn mist steams up from the forest.
A few quetzal birds still somehow survive,
Seeing the forest felled around them:
Caged, they pine for freedom and soon perish,
Preferring death to captivity, dreaming till their hearts break.

Fiesta: fireworks shatter the sky,
Swirl of marimbas, flutes and drums,
As drunken dancers whirl into oblivion,
Swaying and staggering, tumbling over each other,
Laughing and passing out.
I wade through mangrove swamps of reverie,
A glass of aguardiente in hand,
And hold my little life up to the light
Like the fabulous golden-green feather of the quetzal.
This world is wild tobacco smoke,mushroom’s flesh:
Spirits assail me,wherever I turn,
As I trail my totem animal, my blood brother, through jungle,through darkness,
To find whatever destiny decrees.

One night in the year, at Monterrico beach,
The turtles, compelled by the moon, emerge,
Haul their juggernaut bodies up the sand
And, toiling desperately against time,
Excavate nesting holes with their flippers,
Push their eggs out, bury the treasure,
Then race back like pirates to the waves,
Never to see their own eggs hatch,
And the tiny dinosaurs dig to the surface
And dash for the water, desperate to survive,
Swooped upon by ravening beaks in massed attack.

Lake Atitlan shifts through
Multifarious blues and greens as the sun traverses the sky,
Surrounded by steep hills and massive volcanoes,
In the morning the surface is calm and translucent,
But by afternoon the xocomil wind blows in,
Churning up dark turbulent waves.
Inside a little church on the shore,
Smoke and incense drift in the hush,
Amid the myriads of burning candles,
Drunken men and cigar-smoking women
Worship before San Simon,
And tearful whores come to beg his forgiveness,
Embracing his effigy, offering cigarettes and rum.
In Holy Week pilgrims take him down from his stand
And carry him in honour down to the shore,
Bathe him and dress him in Western clothes,
With a jaunty felt hat, and cigar stuck in his mouth,
And praise him for protecting the poor from their oppressors,
Praying that their suffering might at last find its reward.