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poem 4 argentina
Questions Answered
It started when he asked himself too many questions.
Studying in stale schools
where tuition increased
while classmates disappeared into streets
crowded with strangers.
His mother was laid off.
Can you relate?
His mother was fired.
Her supervisors weren’t able to pacify her,
only,
“Senora, do not come back tomorrow.”
His mother cried,
heaves of humiliation,
sobs of sickness,
wails of worry.
That is how her questions were answered.
His father came home only a few months later,
tired, tattered, and torn
he told tales of near termination.
Bartering with unsympathetic managers
walking a tight rope
hours cut to starvation or
extended to deprivation.
“Which will you choose Senor?”
This was how his questions were answered.
Does it reach you?
Can you feel the weight?
Then papa got sick.
Coughing and choking on blood and phlegm,
gasping for air
for redemption
for relief.
but nothing.
Nothing now. No money.
No money for hospitals.
No money for doctors.
No more insurance, no more.
Not now.
Now there is no more papa.
This was how his questions were answered.
The streets, alive, with ears and tongues on fire.
The people, the masses, assembling to assess their aspirations
under the weight of starvation situations.
Concluding with load roars of
“Que se vayan todos!”
“They’ve all got to go!”
“They’ve all got to go!”
and to him the pronoun they takes on a broad meaning.
“They” have come to answer all his questions
from untimely death to,
no education to,
long work days to,
little pay to,
hardships to,
austerity measures to,
no democracy to,
hardships to,
no democracy.
His tongue turns toward tarnished history,
lashing and thrashing,
wagging with words of unity,
of solidarity,
of change,
of nothing short than vindication!
His questions answering themselves more and more
Everyday with the unfolding of history.
Are your questions answered?
From pickets to protests to meetings
and back to home where he cooked dinner
for his mourning mother.
He finds satisfaction in struggle now.
Here in the land of fun and sun,
where the streets of Buenos Aires are littered with pleasure,
where Peronist regimes shed neo-liberal, populist tears
that no longer fool little boys and little girls.
This, Argentina, the wealthiest South American country
now falling to its knees,
prostrating for privatization,
googling over globalization,
cooing for foreign capitalists.
Oh, how you answer his questions so quickly now,
so profoundly now, so accurately.
You, Argentina, where the streets are filled with
organized armies of hope!
Where change is sucked into the lungs of millions
with each and every breath!
Argentina, do you remember the name of the
oppressed’s most beloved hero who
hailed from your shores?
Do you think that Ernesto Guevara does not
answer his questions today?
Are you so naďve as to think that Che does not
mingle and meander along your streets,
through your fields,
among your people
today?
Argentina, your people are calling each other
brother and sister now—
is this not more powerful than the strength
of your armies?
He and she and their brothers and sisters and families
are taking control,
they show you daily they can cancel you.
They can answer their own questions now.
In the factories, fields, and industry you are now longer needed!
What will you do?
Will you run to the world bank, to the IMF—
the capitalist money changing,
oppression lending,
revolution building
institutions you love so well?
Will you teach us all a lesson?
Will you show us how a nation of
underemployed and overworked human beings can
overcome,
overwhelm, and
over run their oppressors?
Will you make and example for the whole world to follow?
Argentina, will you answer our questions?
My brothers and sisters,
mis hermanos y mis hermanas,
Will you please show us how to be strong!
The poem above was written by Rob Welsh.
