Victor Jara, by Fernando Alegría
- Fernando Alegría
Victor Jara
Vengo a llamar la atención
con voz de cantor serrano
al hombre que va sin manos
por cielos de mi nación,
no ignora en su turbación
que las flores se apagaron
y los ríos se sacaron
privados de primavera
por las movidas arteras
de tigres que lo mataron.
Va volando su guitarra
sola entre rojas banderas
quemando la sementera
con su voz que el viento amarra,
viento que saca las garras
buscando en la plaza oscura
sangrante la huella impura
del cuchillo que cortó
tus cuerdas y nos dejó
para siempre tu bravura.
Vuela y canta compañero
sobre llanuras nevadas
no puede tu mano helada
entre rocas del estero
porque es don del buen obrero
hacer noches de mañanas
mientras abre su ventana
a quién le tocó morir
por una ley de vivir
del pueblo contra el guerrero.
Te oigo hermano cantar
en el Estadio vacío
voz de piedra en un río
que nadie habrá de callar,
y me da por preguntar
porqué tu vuelo cortaron
si supieron que fallaron
no por mala puntería
pues el pueblo recibía
vida cuando lo mataron.
—Fernando Alegría
Victor Jara
I come to attract your attention
With a singer's voice, from the highlands
To a man who no longer has hands
Who moves through the skies of his nation
Observing in his consternation
The flowers have started to wilt
The river is no longer filled
Deprived of spring seasons
By cunning and treason
Of tigers by whom he was killed
His guitar in the sky is still flying
Among flags of red which are flown
Above burning fields now sown
With a voice wrapped in the wind's crying
Wind which is clawing and trying
To search through the plaza's dark spaces
For signs of impure bloody traces
Of the knife that cut
Your strings leaving us
Forever your defiant graces
Sing, comrade, fly between cliffs
Over the snow-covered plain
Don't let your cold hand remain
Between rocks and the current's drifts
Because it's the good worker's gifts
That make morning out of the night
That open the window to light
Whose turn it is to die
For law protecting life
Of the people against soldiers' might
Brother I hear your song's trill
In the stadium's echoes alone
Ripples are spread from a stone
That nobody ever can kill
And I find myself asking you still
Did they know that they failed when they tried
Forever to cut short your flight
Not because of bad aim
But the people who came
To life at the moment you died
—Fernando Alegría
translated by María Isabel Silva Hurralde & William Gillespie
Los Poetas y el General: Voces de oposición en Chile bajo Augusto Pinochet 1973-1989 / The Poets and the General: Chile's Voices of Dissent under Augusto Pinochet 1973-1989 is a collection of poetry by Chilean poets living under Pinochet. The book was edited by Eva Wyman, and was published in 2002 by LOM in simultaneous translation in Spanish and English. By way of promoting the book in North America, we are reproducing here some of the poems in the book, as well as this one—"Victor Jara" —which did not make it into the anthology.
LOM Ediciones, 2002. 492 p. Texto en español e ingles. Edited by Eva Goldschmidt Wyman. ISBN: 956-282-491-8.
2002