The nine nights of terror and dreaming are over
because finally a brave muleteer has admitted
that he saw the steward eating a game hen
So now I am free, in a sense
free to work, and my jobs are these:
forgetting to dream while I drive the oxen,
burn the cane,
press the juice of sweet sugar
into a syrup
of courage
Forgetting the truth while I carry the sugar
walking even though my leg is damaged
and I cannot
walk
Forgetting anger while I place cones of sugarloaf
in a shed
Forgetting,
the hardest form of work
and then suddenly, as swift as lightning
disaster again
here it comes
a piece of the roof of the shed
as it falls,
I leap to escape death
even though I can’t forget that death
was the thing I wished for every second
of those long, strange nine days
The slave standing beside me
stacking cones of sugarloaf in the shed by my side
has been crushed.
His name is Andrés.
He was born on this island,
a native
like me.
His name was Andrés.