CARLOS ARREDONDO
MOTHERLAND
***********************
What mother
And what land?
You, me, remember.
If there are only figs to give savour
to our disillusion.
What mother
And what land?
When it served no purpose
for Spain's numbed poets
to shake off forty bruising buffetings
from their own homeland.
What mother
And what land?
Opposed the flight of so many lovely verses,
Framed as accompaniment to emigrant hearts.
What mother
And what land?
Are you talking about exactly, when a capricious dagger flew
out from the Senate to murder me,
thrust into my respectable citizen's ribs.
What mother
And what land?
Served to restrain the ancient sufferings
of her battered people, courtesy of
a conquistador and a present-day pilferer
of public power?
What mother
And what land?
Infiltrated thought, so as to confound
culture and claptrap?
What mother
And what land?
Licensed belief in God
for the purpose of coining money then to be
shipped out to some Bank of America?
Edinburgh, 20-6-05
Translated by John Gillies
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