Parsley*1. The Cane Fields
There is a parrot imitating spring
in the palace, its feathers parsley green.
Out of the
swamp the cane appears
to haunt us, and we cut it down. El General
searches for a word; he is all the world
there
is. Like a parrot imitating spring,
we lie down screaming as rain punches through
and we come up green. We cannot
speak an R-
out of the swamp, the cane appears
and then the mountain we call in whispers
Katalina.The
children gnaw their teeth to arrowheads.
There is a parrot imitating spring.
El General has found his word: perejil.
Who
says it, lives. He laughs, teeth shining
out of the swamp. The cane appears
in our dreams, lashed by wind and streaming.
And
we lie down. For every drop of blood
there is a parrot imitating spring.
Out of the swamp the cane appears.
2.
The Palace
The word the general's chosen is parsley.
It is fall, when thoughts turn
to love and death; the general
thinks
of his mother, how she died in the fall
and he planted her walking cane at the grave
and it flowered, each
spring stolidly forming
four-star blossoms. The general
pulls on his boots, he stomps to
her room in the palace,
the one without
curtains, the one with a parrot
in a brass ring. As he paces he wonders
Who can I kill today. And
for a moment
the little knot of screams
is still. The parrot, who has traveled
all the way from Australia in
an ivory
cage, is, coy as a widow, practising
spring. Ever since the morning
his mother collapsed in the kitchen
while
baking skull-shaped candies
for the Day of the Dead, the general
has hated sweets. He orders pastries
brought up
for the bird; they arrive
dusted with sugar on a bed of lace.
The knot in his throat starts to twitch;
he sees
his boots the first day in battle
splashed with mud and urine
as a soldier falls at his feet amazed--
how stupid
he looked!--at the sound
of artillery. I never thought it would sing
the soldier said, and died. Now
the general
sees the fields of sugar
cane, lashed by rain and streaming.
He sees his mother's smile, the teeth
gnawed into arrowheads.
He hears
the Haitians sing without R's
as they swing the great machetes:
Katalina, they sing, Katalina,
mi
madle, mi amol en muelte. God knows
his mother was no stupid woman; she
could roll an R like a queen. Even
a parrot
can roll an R! In the bare room
the bright feathers arch in a parody
of greenery, as the last pale crumbs
disappear
under the blackened tongue. Someone
calls out his name in a voice
so like his mother's, a startled tear
splashes
the tip of his right boot.
My mother, my love in death.
The general remembers the tiny green sprigs
men of his village
wore in their capes
to honor the birth of a son. He will
order many, this time, to be killed
for a single, beautiful
word.
*"On October 2, 1957, Rafael Trujillo (1891-1961), dictator of the Dominican Republic, ordered
20,000 blacks to be killed because they could not pronounce the letter"r" in perejil, the Spanish word for parsley"(Dove's
note)
