Katharine Beeman, pág. 82

Katharine Beeman, poeta y traductora montrealense, me considero una poeta guerrera, luchando contra el imperialismo con armas de poesía y amor. Miembro y editora correspondiente de la Alianza literaria CanadáCuba. Miembro fundadora del Capítulo Quebec de la red de intelectuales, artistas y movimientos sociales en Defensa de la Humanidad. Sus obras incluyen siete libros, publicaciones en diversas revistas literarias norteamericanas y en más de trece antologías. Ha interpretado sus poemas en Festivales internacionales de poesía en Trois-Rivières, Québec, La Habana, Cuba, los Festivales internacionales de la poesía de la resistencia, Toronto, Ontario y en muchos otros eventos.

Katharine Beeman, Montreal poet and translator, I consider myself a warresse poet, fighting imperialism with weapons of poetry and love. Member and corresponding editor of the Canada-Cuba Literary Alliance. Founding member of the Quebec chapter of the Network of intellectuals, artists and social movements in Defence of Humanity. Her works include seven books, publications in various Northamerican literary magazines and in more than thirteen anthologies. Has read her poems in international poetry festivals in Trois-Rivières, Québec, Havana, Cuba, the International Festivals of Resistence Poetry, Toronto, Ontario, and many other events.

WHERE DO YOU READ AND WRITE?

To be like El Che Is to read in a tree read Goethe in a tent while making revolution, study French locked in the bath, siblings jiggling and shouting about on the other side.

To be like El Che is to write in your books and read them again. To be like El Che is to read and to write Everywhere.

¿DONDE LEES Y ESCRIBES?

Ser como El Che es leer en un árbol leer a Goethe en una carpa mientras hace la revolución, estudiar francés encerrado en el baño, hermanos y hermanas vibrando y clamando al otro lado.

Ser como El Che es escribir en tus libros y volver a leerlos.

Ser como El Che es leer y escribir En Todas Partes.

THE WEIGHT OF THE GRIEF IN THE WORLD canto for the first quarter of the 21st century

A contempt for the people is one of the many things shared by state and private terror.

Eduardo Galeano, 2001

The weight of grief in the world nowhere new weighs heavier drifts over the border each grief as new as snowflakes tiny griefs –a dog by the bowl, the cat waiting for the open door. And the gold of the Bank of Nova Scotia sinks as the salt of the earth disperse to cinders with their morning coffee. From Guernica to Baghdad

our side is the bombed, scraping egg off plates for minumum wage 107 inhuman stories high. There can be no number attached to the weight of grief in the world. “Just five minutes to forget, to remember what it was like before this happened” “I wake up every morning and I face fear and I get up and go to work anyway”. And those other September 11s –1973, Chile, 1988 Haiti…and? There can be no forgetting the weight of grief in the world.

“Welcome to your history America,” said the young Sri Lankan woman refugee expressing the pain, anger and determination

of thousands, demonstrating against the new U.S. war – as under capitalism there is always a new war –the old war is dead, long live the war.

Pain, because another several thousand, mostly working people settling into or serving their first cup of coffee for the day, fighting another daily fire bite the dust in a war of which they weren’t even aware.

Anger, because for decades in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and Asia, workers and farmers, women and children first, have fallen, swiftly under bombs, invasions and counterinsurgency, slowly under blockades, boycotts, merciless murderous policies of structural adjustment. Few beyond their immediate families knew or shared this pain.

Determination, that this state of affairs must end. No more war. Not only the new U.S. war but an end

to all the old wars – the Columbia Plan, the blockade of Cuba, the occupation of Palestine…

Those who scorn the salt of the earth who forget the weight of grief in the world will drown in its ashes at the end of empire.

The end of empire anyone knows by reading the National Geographic King Tut, Ming, Inca, Rome

and all that, feeling it in our bones coursing through our blood when the towers fall when the waters rise whose side are we on at the end of empire?

Are we grinning rubbing our hands with glee as they fall through the cracks, those who have been falling, falling for a long time now through empire’s cracks to be swept away?

What is our job at the end of empire?

Are we caretakers waiting with broom in hand to sweep away the dust of the mighty and the small who fell in the collapse?

Are we accountants, reckoning the cost, so much on our side, so much on theirs, trusting history not to count the petty change?

Are we not called, rather, to be cooks, preparing in advance, gathering the ingredients, handing each one a spoon, the whisk, a mallet, aprons against the spills and splatter, wet fingers tasting the burner’s sizzle?

Weighing the grief in the world, let us render it down over a slow fire, clarifying the precious drops, greasing, lubricating, easing the conflagration, husbanding, tending the small who otherwise fall through the cracks.

EVASORES DEL BLOQUEO

Estos los nuestros / son tiempos en que placas tectónicas de personal político chocan se montan una sobre otra se funden en una mezcla inseparable.

Este bloqueo lo siente en sus huesos caminando a casa en Holguín lo siente en sus huesos este bloqueo

en el duro cemento bajo sus pies porque ha estado 40 minutos de pie esperando para comprar algo que incluso podría no haber en la tienda cuando llegue allí;

el sol ardiente en sus ojos porque solo puede evitar su curso a través del cielo cierto tiempo mientras esté parada aquí sobre un bloque de cemento duro, esperando para comprar algo que tal vez incluso ni haya en la tienda;

la política es la vida diaria y nos abre camino a través de ella, guiados,

como dijo el Che que un revolucionario es guiado, por un gran sentimiento de amor; parada aquí con pies adoloridos por el duro cemento con ojos escocidos por el sol ardiente evadiendo este bloqueo que se siente en nuestros huesos.

El bloqueo duele cual piratas que cercan la isla duele este paraíso dentro de la escasez. Evasores del bloqueo, familias en el extranjero anhelando por el hogar haciendo envíos a casa, o turistas novatos abren pequeños agujeros de justicia infiltran minucias necesarias a través del dique.

Tubos de pasta de dientes Rollos de papel higiénico o una ambulancia y antibióticos taladrando y debilitando hasta ¡patapum! ¡explosión!

la red creciente de la voluntad derriba el bloqueo.