poems about social justice

Over there at height, the absolute haze,
Condors and flamingos flying the escarpment,
Cordillera Vilcanota of four hundred glaciers
whose clouds are the thinking of mountains.
Snow-capped Ausangate, the tutelar spirit,
its eyes are the turquoise lagoons
that are loving the Stone Forest,
the sun writes the seasons over
the inca sundial at Intihuatana,
Elusive deers leap by black rocks
like blades that hide the cougar.
Down at the huge precipice heather covered
the mighty Urubamba is breaking its swell.

Towards Vilcabamba, sacred city of Pachacútec
the Sons of Sun go fleeing from faith
and treachery of friars, of greedy conquerors
and viceroys, all of them accomplished enemies.
The dew-morning at Cordillera, are tears…

On the peaks of almost solid mist,
The student of Garcilaso, Jesuit scholar,
clandestine reader from Rousseau and Voltaire,
survivor of the Solar Lineage exterminated,
Túpak Amaru returns to life.

With rebellion are inhabited, the peaks in November
that only slavery and domination lived in those heights.
Creoles, zambos, Indian, mestizo, both male and female
one same body and beginning, fraternity
with some aftertaste of compass, level and plumb.

The Eight Haughty Peoples rose in revolt,
the Council of Five and Túpac’s wife Micaela
formed a poorly equipped army of seven thousand,
seven thousand disinherited following
their solar Inca Tupac Amaru the second,
against the detestable tyranny and forced labour
of Indians at mercury mines and chained blacks.

Speaks the ch’anka oracle, roar of the Apurimac,
torrent river like sea. And enslaved people
rise up victorious throughout all the country.

Nevertheless they will be dominated again. Tortured,
Túpac Amaru writes messages with his blood.
He is forced to witness the atrocious executions
of his family and followers unto the fourth generation,
ordered by José Antonio de Areche, the Visitador.
badly injured, the last Inca faced death.
First, they cut off his tongue, then tie up his members
to four horses pulling in the four directions, but he dies not.

Then, bored, the Spanish barbarian
beheads and dismembers in parts, that he sends
unto all latitudes of Tiwantinsuyo to be exposed.
Adds abomination doing the same to Micaela’s body.

On the heights of love and light,
the terror stayed like a dagger, rooted in souls
as a stab, terror stays planted in souls,
a dagger that no one was strong enough to take out.

In tears, the Inca people go burning
the bloodcurdling pieces of bodies of their sovereigns
Later, their ashes and continental insurrection
were scattered, beyond time,
by royal eagles and crowned hawks.

And you resurrect, again and again, son of the Sun,
Tupac Amaru Inka, in Uruguay, Argentina and Chile.
In Ecuador, Bolivia, Colombia and Venezuela,
to set fire at American freedom.

The end.

They all wanted to be good.
It strikes me that about desire.
That the lovers incessantly express
after all indecision
troubadours of nightmares and sorrows
under all lunar and terrestrial shadows,

They all wore their lamps working on hands
clean or dirty, bloody or diaphanous,
murderous poetries
of hatred and misunderstanding
or tender feathers of hope,
like canals channeling the torn sails
in the improbable boats of miserable dreams.

They all wanted one day be the best
Was the hope of open and pale childhoods
shot to death, leafless, and in despite of all,
with the arrow of sun still between their fingers,
they all continue to follow that mystery
persisting in the open estuary
before devouring ocean surf
millenary like the immortal desperation
of so many empty wishes,
with no place in the infamous present
doomed to death, consumed
into the flames of any local crematory,
on the lips of a mother
who failed to maintain the immortal flame,
or on the seals of national loan bonds,
such as lullaby to empty cradles.

Everyone wanted to conquer evil
forgetting that good is not absolute,
forgetting the pains of Icarus and Apollo,
but we all wanted to be good,
forgetting that perfect good is inhuman.
This is how we build The Hell!

Cut the seas
figurehead,
run ominous waves! …

Shew us
new damned reefs,
coral of human vermilion
loaded with chunks of rails
the ruthless sowed
on the high seas.

The Pacific roars its distress
rises to sky its monstrous waves,
as arms that last rocked
agonizing bagged bodies
on the innocent cradle of sea …

But they fall not silent,
not die neither rest.

Badly wounded,
this waning boat
go aimlessly.

Badly wounded,
ardent bow figurehead …

More at http://www.poemasentreslenguas.blogspot.com.

Let these trying times be over
And we shall find our true selves
Once again that in shame and shackles
We seemed to be fast losing away
When the world arrayed against us
In its own fabricated lies it told
To make people close to us buy
Versions they packed in nonsense
In their own crooked designs
Ignoring propriety, piety and
Patient indulgence to press us into
Hard anguish and deep mental shock
At a time we thought the time
Was ripe and we could live by
The years of labour we had put in
With the fruits they had borne.

Now please tell us if any other
Way could there for us be left
That we would choose and pursue
To give us all that we by all counts
Deserve and them all that we like
To grant them forgetting what mighty
Harm they planned to inflict on us to
Smother our dreams and murder us
Much before any of progenies proper
We could think of transferring our
Hard-earned claims to fortune and living
By way of lawful inheritance in grace
Without bloodshed and rancour
In saving and uniting forgiveness
Soaked in consummate cordiality
And gripping compassion.