I Begin by Invoking Walt Whitman

Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971, is Chile’s most famous poet and his poetry is loved throughout the world. He died in Santiago de Chile on September 23, 1973, just days after the coup.

          Because I love my country

          I claim you, essential brother,

          old Walt Whitman with your gray hands,

          so that, with your special help

          line by line, we will tear out by the roots

          this bloodthirsty President Nixon.

          There can be no happy man on earth,

          no one can work well on this planet

          while that nose continues to breathe in Washington.

          Asking the old bard to confer with me

          I assume the duties of a poet

          armed with a terrorist’s sonnet

          because I must carry out with no regrets

          this sentence, never before witnessed,

          of shooting a criminal under siege,

          who in spite of his trips to the moon

          has killed so many here on earth

          that the paper flies up and the pen is unsheathed

          to set down the name of this villain

          who practices genocide from the White House.