SocialistStories حكايات اشتراكية

Distribution of People's Property
In the Thieves' Market
by Roque Dalton

They've told us that the Executive Power
is the First Power
and that the Legislative Power, which was divided up by
a bunch of crooks, fractioned off into "government" and
"opposition"
is the Second Power
and that the prostituted (but ever Honorable)
Supreme Court of Justice
in the Third Power.

The newspapers, radio, and TV of the rich
have designated themselves the Fourth Power and of course
march hand in hand with the first three powers.

Passing Truck
by Roque Dalton

I read on the side of a passing truck
filled to bursting with soldiers:
"Armed Forces of El Salvador."

If it's true it's force
why the need to be armed?

Or is it that its only strength
is that of being armed?

Or is it that the term "armed"
is the adjectivization of the verb to arm or to assemble
currently in use
when we refer to Westinghouse refrigerators
RCA televisions
and so many other appliances
that North Americans
assemble in their local
cheap labor installations?

Liberation:

Passing Truck - Roque Dalton.pdf

To Poetry
by Roque Dalton

I welcome you poetry
grateful because meeting you today
(in life and in books)
you don't exist merely for the dazzling
great adornment of melancholy.

Moreover you can improve me today
by helping me serve in
this long and difficult struggle of our people

Now you are in you element:
no longer the splendid alternative
that divided me from my own place

And you keep on being beautiful
comrade poetry
among beautiful real arms burning under the sun
between my hands and upon my shoulder

You keep burning close

In the Future
by Roque Dalton

When our society is
basically just
that is
socialist
in the conversations in pubs
at the moment of intimate confession
more than a few will say with down-cast eyes,
"I held private property based on the means of production"
like when they say today
"I had syphilis"
"I had tendencies toward sexual aberrations."

Liberation:

In the Future - Roque Dalton.pdf

Songs for Civilians
by Roque Dalton

"I don't know, soldier,
why you think I hate you,
If we're the same,
you and I."
—Nicolás Guillén

The following poems are answers, in the voice of a goon, not
to the beautiful and apt poem of Nicolás Guillén, but to those
who use it for impossible communications, over and above the
standards of reality, mother and mistress of poetry, contriver of
its efficacy and limitations.

I
"If you don't know, Civilian,
why I think you hate me
I'm not going to be the one who,

The Bourgeoisie
by Roque Dalton

Those who produce liquor
and then say it's not necessary to increase the salary
of the peasants
because they're going to spend it all on booze.

Those who speak with their families
exclusively in English
amidst Dubuffet paintings and Bohemian crystal
life-sife photographs
of mares brought back from Kentucky and Vienna
and charge us daily in sweat and blood
for their painful routine awakening
in this land of dirty Indians
so far from New York and Paris.

Those who've understood, that if one looks

The Cops and the Guards
by Roque Dalton

They always saw the people
as a mass of backs running away
as a field on which their clubs fell with hatred.

They always saw the people with an eye on sharpening their
aim
and between the people and their eye
the sight of a pistol or a rifle.

(They too were once people
but with the excuse of hunger and unemployment
they accepted a weapon a club and a monthly salary
to defend the makers of hunger and unemployment.)

They always saw the people enduring
sweating
shouting
raising placards

Ultraleftists
by Roque Dalton

The pipiles
who didn't understand the cross and more advanced culture
and didn't want to bow down before the Crown of Spain
and rose up in the mountains
with weapons in their hands
against the conquistador.

Those who nourished the flame
of native rebellion for 300 colonial years
and died hunted in the mountains or by the
vile garrot or on the gallows
and refused to peaceably co-exist with the feudal lord
in the bosom of estates and land allotments.

Pedro Pablo Castillo and the communards of 1814

Variations on a Phrase by Christ
by Roque Dalton

"Render unto God that which is God's
and to Caesar that which is Caesar's."

I
Render unto God that which is God's
and to the fascist government of President Molina
that which the fascist government of President Molina
deserves.

I don't pretend to know, since my infancy,
everything that is God's

But I'm sure about what we must give
the fascist government of President Molina.

II
Give unto God that which is God's

Some of the First Proposals for The Epitaph for His Most Reverend Excellency Monsignor Francisco Jose Castro Ramirez, Head Bishop of the City of Santiago de Maria (QDDG) and Better Known to the People (Whom He Called "Rabble") by the Definitive Nickname "White-Washed Tomb"

by Roque Dalton

1
"Of few men can it be said that they continue existing after
death exactly as they were in life."

2
"A whole part of the being of the Church died with him. So