XX
MY SOUL aches brother
something not in your nature perhaps
inescapable experience in cracked
clay vessels like me
there are aches that only pain
others drip between puny fears
most demand accommodations in life
we end up embracing the saving tricks
as handouts wrapped in hope
there are aches that pair up
with blasphemies or remorse
there are those that urge us to lift
a fist and howl along canals and byroads
against those who will always win
there are those that convince us
that mouth heart elbow soul
go on fighting against nothingness
on golden blankets of silence
XXI
FOR ME gods are signs
of our own naked power
but to realize that is no liberation
it is now useless to bray against them
need brings about its own cure
all remedy becomes tradition
nothing is left but to show fake wounds
pouts whimpers contrition
there is no taking back what has been given
to blaspheme is to cover up truth and awe
better to encourage supplications to a savior
even though they are not worth it
XXIV
LOOK brother
my songs are bones hung
on the string of my time they peer
between hopes rejections and afflictions
let them hear me in the silence of their hours
let them suck my marrow when they walk
lost in their own shadows
I hope they don’t celebrate life by remembering death
better that they hang up their own bones
on the string of their own time
let them lick their own elbows
let them knock their brains out
on their own desert
what do you think?
Selected and edited by Eli Urbina Montenegro
BRAULIO MUÑOZ was born in Chimbote, Peru. There he was a student and labor organizer and a radio and print journalist. He immigrated to the USA in 1968. He earned a PhD in sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. He is Centennial Professor Emeritus of Swarthmore College where he taught social theory and Latin American Culture. Among Professor Muñoz’s works related to literature are Sons of the Wind and Storyteller: Mario Vargas Llosa Between Civilization and Barbarism. In fiction he has written Alejandro y los Pescadores de Tancay, which was translated into English and received the International Book Award at the New York Book Fair in 2009. The novel has also been translated into Italian. His other works of fiction include The Peruvian Notebooks (also translated into Italian), Los Apuntes de Alejandro, El Misha, the poem-novella Plaza mayor, a book of stories, El Hombre Que Sabía Morir y Otros Relatos, and Yaraví, a book of poems. He and his wife Nancy live in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania.
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