POEM: WE MUSTN'T CRY, WE MUST CONTINUE

"WE MUSTN'T CRY, WE MUST CONTINUE!"

(a poem for chilean/spanish/sister comrade

Beatriz Allende, whose death

12 Oct. 77 has been classified

as a suicide) 

I. WE MUSTN'T CRY

 

8 Oct. 1967

bulletin

bullets in him

the doctor is dead

bulletin

Che Guevara is dead

is dead

bulletin

they said

"raise his head,

cut his hands,

let the whole world watch"

 

11 Sept. 1973

the poor are pushed back into their "places"

the proletarian palace is pulverized

the bespectacled physician/president

    with the incongruous hard had on

    is finally finished off, at last

chile is cold again, again a safe

haven for pullers of fingernails

and militant mutilators of genitals,

of generations

 

pentagon generals politely applaud

wall street winks, sighs

deep in IT&T

a brief missive settles

"START. Business as Usual.

START."

 

5 Oct. 1974

the news probably came

glaring over a short wave

dressed in nothing

but the brutal bottom line

 

the much sought

finally caught

terrorist "revolutionary"

Miguel Enriquez,

Secretary General of the

Movement of the Revolutionary Left

(MIR) the outlawed and

banned communist group

has been shot

dead in Chile

 

 

 

II. WE MUST CONTINUE

 

11 Oct. 1977

Habana

looking back in stoney silence

Beatriz does not turn

 

a woman

surveys the casulties

entombed in her mind:

 

is this maddening life-extinguishing

exile what I was reserved to

be a showpiece of a rusted revolution

a woman who vainly waits, keeping female

faith in a stone that's gone to dust like

our male seed scattered

revolutionary cemeteries have created

an incredible metamorphosis

I too have become a man

or what you mean when you

say "man," have already

done all that our men do

except die -- I am dying,

but I have not died yet

but, yes, like all the others

I'll gladly drink my bitter cup

spare me nothing

 

a woman?

yes/no, a mother, a

physician, a lover, a

revolutionary, a

flesh, a mind, a

feeling, a deed, I

don't mind dying

if that's what it takes

to continue, Che continued

Allende my sire,

Miguel my guide, and

now, and now I

 

outside somewhere someone is waiting

for me to speak, it's rally time again

bring out the bereaved widow

of socialism, not I any longer,

not I, now

 

it's my turn to continue

I must continue on

and meet this end

 

—kalamu ya salaam