Criminals & Saints

 

The death penalty smacks of an arrogant krishna in a mosqui-
                    to net.
A magazine demands the building of lighthouses against the
                    dark waves
threatening our commercial fleets into beaching for pirates.
                    The flies
in our government call Neruda a liar, confuse themselves with
                    the Chilean,
and pride themselves too as sole heirs to a fortnightly anniver-
                    sary of
new politics—national chronicles add notes to notes, add
                    notes
to notes, beyond generics, abstraction. White gold shines
                    between
the brown teeth of our I Ching interests, a power cleanser
                    to the
depression in our kitchens. And who minds the unwashed
                    brushes?
The police are reading non-books, the bathers have drowned
                    witnesses,
three decades of changing judges have not unmatched the box
                    of
threatening tinders. And the night is thunder, the lamp-
                    lights tender, I
tremble at the typewriter while students study almanacs.
                    Whatever
the President is reading, or the mayor, or the
                    generals,—these escape
the watchman atop my angry lashes. As who is not hungry?
                    Whose
brain is healthy among the priests preaching further maga-
                    zines of
slippers, mats, fluorescent lamps, plates, typewriter rib-
                    bons, electric
fans . . . the death penalty attracts arrogant krishnas in
                    their

mosquito nets. He who rapes gets hanged, they who rob get
                    the chair;
victims of criminal injustice continue to get it, she who’s
                    been raped
gets hanged, they who’d been robbed get charred, let’s face
                    it: war is
war is war is war as a rose is a rose. That is not the
                    point. He who
kills must not be afraid of ice, the cold of it, the pain of
                    it, the November
of its year’s appropriateness, it is still inappropriate.
                    Not that God
alone has the right to take away light, everybody has the
                    right to
kill anybody. The point is in the comma, how we do not have
                    to like
criminals or saints, but how we want to fix things: oneup-
                    manship, envy.

 

 

—1986

 

 

 

Copyright © 1999, 2004 Vicente-Ignacio Soria de Veyra. All rights reserved. Readers are welcome to view, save, file and print out single copies of this webpage for their personal use. No reproduction, display, performance, multiple copy, transmission, or distribution of the work herein, or any excerpt, adaptation, abridgment or translation of same, may be made without written permission from the author. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this work will be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

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