When you were a kid we celebrated
your graces and ups and downs; as a little man
your ingenious good taste and daring.
Now that you use your Cervantes,
your French, your Péguy, everything you previously
learned, heard and wrote
in praise of tyranny,
let us celebrate your crime.

We present this work in honor of the Nicaraguan holiday, the Battle of San Jacinto.

You take the street on which the large church fronts
And go some twenty blocks and up a hill
And past the three-arch bridge until you come
To Guadalupe, where the houses are
No stately Spanish buildings, flat and lazy,
As in the center of the town you see them —
Heavy with some three centuries upon them,
Accustomed to the sunlight and the earthquakes,
To sudden dawns, long days and sudden sunsets,
Half bored, you fancy, by these ways of nature —
But little things, ugly almost, and frail,
With low red roofs and flimsy rough-cut doors,
A trifle better than an Indian hut,
Not picturesque, just dreary commonplace —
As commonplace and dreary as the flats
Here, in your cities, where your poor folks live —
And yet, you notice, glad the sun is shining,
And glad a cooling wind begins to blow,
Too glad, too purely, humbly glad to say it;
And all the while afraid of the volcanoes,
Holding their breath lest these should wake to crush them.
Look through these doors and see the walls inside
With holy pictures, saints and angels, there,
Sold to my people, reverenced by them;
Look through these doors and see the children, playing
Or wrangling, just as children will elsewhere;
Look through these doors and see the women, sewing,
Setting their tables, doing the thousand things
Hardly worth noticing, that women do
Around their houses, meaning life to them.
And if you listen you may hear them singing —
Not anywhere are better songs than theirs.
It’s nothing thrilling! Tourists do not care,
And if you hire a common guide he’ll never
Think of directing you, to see this mere
Unhonored dailiness of people’s lives
That is the soil the roots of beauty know.

Yet, if you wish to know my country — it’s there.

The old Cathedral that the Spaniards built,
With hand-carved altars for two thousand saints;
The ruined fortress where they say that Nelson,
Who was a pirate then, lost his left eye
Fighting a woman, all that tourists see —
That’s what my country used to be, not now.
The “dear” hotel, with palm-trees in the courtyard,
And a self-playing piano drumming rags;
The shops of German, English and French owners;
The parlors of the ruling class, adorned
With much the same bad taste as in New York —
That’s not my country either! But the rows
Of ugly little houses where men dwell,
And women — all too busy living life
To think of faking it — that is my country,
My Nicaragua, mother of great poets.
And when you see that, what? Just this: Despite
Newspaper revolutions and so forth,
The different climate and the different
Traditions and the different grandfathers,
My people are pretty much the same as yours:
Folks with their worries and their hopes about them,
Working for bread and for a something more
That ever changes, hardly twice the same;
Happy and sad, the very joy and sorrow
Your people feel; at heart just plainly human:
And that is worth the journey to find out.

I had seen coconut trees and tamarinds
and mangos
the white sails drying in the sun
the smoke of breakfast across the sky
at dawn
and fish jumping in the net
and a girl in red
who would go down to the shore and come up with a jug
and pass behind a grove
and appear and disappear
and for a long time
I could not sail without that image
of the girl in red
and the coconut trees and tamarinds and mangos
that seemed to live only
because she lived
and the white sails were white only
when she lay down
in her red dress and the smoke was blue
and the fish and the reflection of the fish
were happy
and for a long time I wanted to write a poem
about that girl in red
and couldn’t find the way to describe
the strange things that fascinated me
and when I told my friends they laughed
but when I sailed away and returned
I always passed the island of the girl in red
until one day I entered the bay of her island
and cast anchor and leaped to land
and now I write these lines and throw them into the waves in a bottle
because this is my story
because I am gazing at coconut trees and tamarinds
and mangos
the white sails drying in the sun
and the smoke of breakfast across the sky
and time passes
and we wait and wait
and we grunt
and she does not come with ears of corn
the girl in red.

Translation by Grace Schulman and Ann McCarthy de Zavala

We present this work in honor of the poet’s 135th birthday.

Hail to thee, Nicaragua! On thy land
roareth the voice of the cannon no more,
nor doeth the blood of brothers now stain
thy glorious bicolor banner.

Let peace shine beautifully in thy sky,
and nothing dimmeth thine immortal glory,
for labor is thy well-earned laurel
and honor is thy triumphal emblem,
is thy triumphal emblem!