PATRIOTIC POEM
Campo, Rafael
Poem Patriotic Poem after Neruda The war on words had been declared. A voice was now considered dangerous, and could be confiscated by police. A metaphor lay beaten in the street while...
...A girl spelled "moratorium" in school...
...A lullaby defied the curfew, night close in around it like swaddling clothes...
...the next day she was dead, her hands sawn off as punishment...
...A lie ran naked through the capital, while onlookers looked on...
...It seemed that everything stopped making sense: the punctuation of the traffic lights, the thudding sound of dictionaries shut, the heavy heart the poet wore to bed for love...
...WAR ON WORDS DECLARED cried out the evening paper, soundlessly, too late— the President was on TV to say we had won, we had won, we had won...
...Rafael Campo Rafael Campos most recent books are "Landscape with Human Figure" and "The Healing Art: A Doctor's Black Bag of Poetry...
...A metaphor lay beaten in the street while moonlight bathed it in white tears...
...The war on words had been declared, in language none could contradict...
...Soon, silence stole over the land, broken only by the piercing protest of car alarms set off by no one's touch, a neighbor's wailing weed-whacker, a song that once remembered one cannot get out of one's head...
Vol. 68 • December 2004 • No. 12
