"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)
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
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