Besides being Mothers Day on May 10th, it was also the 33rd anniversay of the death of Salvadoran poet Roque Dalton. I went to a concert in the Centro to commemorate the day and listened to music ranging from Hip Hop to Reggae to Heavy Metal. Not surprisingly, my favorite by far was the Reggae Groups. While sitting there in the park, a street kid came up to us and asked for money to buy food. I bought him a sandwich instead and he sat with us and ate it. A bee started to attack him and he freaked out and started thrashing and ducking from it. A number of people close by started laughing and pointing it made me sad. A few weeks ago I was at a home for street kids who are recovering from drug addictions as most kids who live on the street are addicted to sniffing glue. The kids at this house seemed like normal little boys! I think the kid who ate his sandwich with us had some addictions and he was really dirty and didn´t wear shoes. Its amazing how easy it is to look at a kid differently who is dirty and begging than a kid who is clean and playing soccer with you. When he got up and left he shook our hands and said "Gracias." Ironically, one of the later reggae groups sang a song they had written about street kids and it talked about how easy it is to ignore them and refuse to give them money because you don´t know if it will go to buy drugs.
Relating this back to Roque Dalton...all the groups had pretty cool social messages like this one and it was inspiring to think about how art is used in so many different ways to express beliefs and inspire societies. I will close with my favorite poem by Dalton called "Como tu" or "Like You"
Como Tú (1975)
Por Roque Dalton
Yo como tú
amo el amor,
la vida,
el dulce encanto de las cosas
el paisaje celeste de los días de enero.
También mi sangre bulle
y río por los ojos
que han conocido el brote de las lágrimas.
Creo que el mundo es bello,
que la poesía es como el pan,
de todos.
Y que mis venas no terminan en mí,
sino en la sangre unánime
de los que luchan por la vida,
el amor,
las cosas,
el paisaje y el pan,
la poesía de todos.
Like You
By Roque Dalton
(Translated by Jack Hirschman)
Like you I
love love, life, the sweet smell
of things, the sky-
blue landscape of January days.
And my blood boils up
and I laugh through eyes
that have known the buds of tears.
I believe the world is beautiful
and that poetry, like bread, is for everyone.
And that my veins don’t end in me
but in the unanimous blood
of those who struggle for life,
love,
little things,
landscape and bread,
the poetry of everyone.
2 comments:
I did miss the point of your blog, If you are going to talk about Dalton you might want to mention why "these kids" are addicted to drugs in the first place. For people who dont know, because all it does is perpetuate a continuous negative image of El Salvador. These kids are addicted because they dont have food and it gets their mind of starvation. And people need to know that. I believe it is something significant to mention if you are going to be talking about a the socio economic, or underdevelopement of the country created by capatalist coportations and imperialist systems like the one in America.
There are things in my life that simply i'll never understand. Why people is, trying to change people when they don't have changed yet even a little of themselves, preaching to take the wood to Calvary when they haven't step yet on the road of martirs.
Talk to me when you are able of stablish to form a family and then i'll follow your ideals.
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