Today’s recommended post is Momo’s, on the background of Robert Gates. In honor of places devastated by people still connected with the U.S. government, and by several former U.S. governments as well, we need some poems.
Salomón de la Selva was from León, Nicaragua, where I went last year. He wrote these poems in English, and others in Spanish.
TROPICAL TOWN
Blue, pink, and yellow houses, and, afar,
The cemetery, where the green trees are.
Sometimes you see a hungry dog pass by,
And there are always buzzards in the sky.
Sometimes you hear the big cathedral bell,
A blind man rings it; and sometimes you hear
A rumbling ox-cart that brings wood to sell.
Else nothing ever breaks the ancient spell
That holds the town asleep, save, once a year,
The Easter festival . . .
I come from there,
And when I tire of hoping, and despair
Is heavy over me, my thoughts go far,
Beyond that length of lazy street to where
The green trees and the white graves are.
TROPICAL HOUSE
When the winter comes, I will take you to Nicaragua–
You will love it there!
you will love my home, my house in Nicaragua,
So large and queenly looking, with a haughty air
That seems to tell the mountains, the mountains of Nicaragua,
“You may roar and you may tremble for all I care!”
It is shadowy and cool,
Has a garden in the middle where fruit trees grow,
And poppies, like a little army, row on row,
And jasmine bushes that will make you think of snow
They are so white and light, so perfect and so frail,
And when the wind is blowing they fly and flutter so.
The bath is in the garden, like a sort of pool,
With walls of honeysuckle and orchids all around;
The humming birds are always making a sleep sound;
In the night there’s the Aztec nightingale;
But when the moon is up, in Nicaragua,
The moon of Nicaragua and the million stars,
It’s the human heart that sings, and the heart of Nicaragua,
To the pleading, plaintive music of guitars!
—Salomón de la Selva, New York, 1918.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 