A poem by Juan Bañuelos

For the tortured and assassinated Indios and campesinos

Imprisoned country

Turbulent
Clamoring
Grieving

It’s not the light

It’s the smoke that awakens
with the viscera of dust in its hands

It’s the rotten rust exhaled
by the disappeared

It’s the children who play with skeletons

It’s the moon that can discern
all the tortured by their own terror

And on the edges of eyelids
ulcers of hunger

                Suddenly

    our language

    spits out
    the gravedigger’s liquor

    assassins shout
    through the anus

obsidian winds sweep away
the saltpeter the haze the red vapor
of the massacre

the last second preceding
enlightenment

Let the sun set itself in motion
Let the heavens never again fall upon the earth

widows scream
sheltering our foreheads

with thin mouths
and the dead eye of the moon

              The hummingbird’s egg:
              an aurora borealis

There is a faraway country so turbulent
so great   And yet again so far

Note: This poem was translated by Barbara Paschke, for the book First World, Ha Ha Ha! The Zapatista Challenge (1995).