Patriotic poem: after Neruda

Patriotic Poem
after Neruda

   The war on words had been declared. A voice
   was now considered dangerous,
   and could be confiscated by police.
   A metaphor lay beaten in the street
   while moonlight bathed it in white tears. The war
   on words had been declared, in language none
   could contradict. A lie ran naked through
   the capital, while onlookers looked on.
   It seemed that everything stopped making sense:
   the punctuation of the traffic lights,
   the thudding sound of dictionaries shut,
   the heavy heart the poet wore to bed
   for love. The war on words had been declared.
   A lullaby defied the curfew, night
   close in around it like swaddling clothes.
   A girl spelled "moratorium" in school;
   the next day she was dead, her hands sawn off
   as punishment. The war on words had been
   declared. Soon, silence stole over the land,
   broken only by the piercing protest
   of car alarms set off by no one's touch,
   a neighbor's wailing weed-whacker, a song
   that once remembered one cannot get out
   of one's head. WAR ON WORDS DECLARED cried out
   the evening paper, soundlessly, too late--the
   President was on TV to say
   we had won, we had won, we had won.

Rafael Campo's most recent books are "Landscape with Human Figure" and "The Healing Art: A Doctor's Black Bag of Poetry."

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