They loved Granada like a woman.
Even today tears well up in their eyes
when they remember the loss of their dear Granada
the town of the Chamorros …
Where once there was love.
At last the pure waters,
the clean blue breezes of the early morning
and out of Granada with its red corpses and torches
and groans and death rattles and shouts and explosions
and the smell of the houses, rags, furniture, garbage, bodies burning!
Toward the two brother volcanos
rising out of the waters,
and through the closed-off villages
with the dogs barking …
And the men went back to the States.
–E.C., “With Walker in Nicaragua,” 1952. Trans. Jonathan Cohen.
I am getting interested in reading more of Cardenal than I have read and also in reading William Walker himself. I am not having an easy time finding this poem on line in the original but particularly for the section quoted here, I want it.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 