SONG FOR AMERICA by Jacques Viau Renaud trans. Ariel Francisco

by Ariel Francisco / Tuesday, 14 November 2023 / Published in ISSUE 28, Translation

America, sitting atop the night’s shoulders
singing in the faces of the hungry
deciphering the language of sadness
measuring the modulation of hatred in our children’s stomachs.
America, they’ve stolen your joy
destroying the muscles in your face
tied your heart to the vigil
where thousands of beings wander
inhabited by death,
a death we drag since men, from beyond,
buried his sword, before your name on this earth.
And the dirt
and the mold
and the mud
of our sun-threshed life.

America, get up America
shake off the dust and rust inside you.
America reborn
reborn America
American men,
American women and children
listen to the tremor rumbling from the Antilles
from that stone peak giving birth
to the voice of a child singing from a tiny island
from the hammering of the scaffold
whose shoulders are built from the blows of cackles
and courage
the pure orb of “American love.”

Listen
a new howl fills the sails of America
dragged by the enemies of man
capitalists,
proxies of the temples and Bibles
in the courts of peace and death
so the truth does not burn Bolivia into thirst,
strangled with a clay cord
the heir of the Inca’s
dead on an eternal bonfire
so the light won’t awaken the sleeping quetzal
atop the ruins of aboriginal silence,
to Chile, long and vibrant,
a spear pierced through the heart of an Araucanian;
to Central America
massacred by dynamited bananas,
to Venezuela
where the capital houses their steepest gallows
and the hosts of love are an impenetrable bastion.
To Brazil with large land and few people
adorning their rags with diamonds
tears on the soldiers lapels
while in Argentina and Paraguay
blood clots hang from the commanders medals
and from chimneys rise the stench of crushed meat.
Oh America!
Now without sail
without compass
bent from hunger
bitter fruit fallen
from a shadeless tree
under whose ruined structure
the American licks the back of sadness.

Oh America!
Piece of the dissected chant,
America, America,
reborn America
burdened men of America
light your bonfires
and march towards the light that guards history.

March
inheritors of blood
Colombian cowboys
with their enormous stomachs
where sunflowers bloom.
Natives of Peru
and Ecuador sleepy with coca
raise the ancient face of purity
and tell your secrets.

And you, Puerto Rico
nailed to the jaws of hatred
small lump of sugar plagued by vermin
slow assassination
crushed between masses of metal and glass.
Oh Puerto Rico
I love you more than any other American homeland
because you permanently inhabit the cry
I love you
I love you
I love you from Santo Domingo
dismembered corpse
shout parted in two
but born of a single throat
from a single anguish,
alone.

Oh America
piece of the dissected chant
with a luminous morning
built by the guerillas of love
who have their widest smile in Cuba.

Oh America
for you so many men fight
for you they die
how much love must be housed
to die for you
for an America not yet born
and won’t be for some time.
Americans of the new gospel
hold in your hands
our heart’s clamor
raise high our cry
tighten the knots that tie us to tenderness
the infant dawn of a smile
tied with your veins
wet with your blood
purified by your cry.

Americans of the new gospel
raise high our cry
so it survives the flood
because it will give birth to generations of happiness
an ample mankind
large as the smile of the proletarian sunrise
forever seedlings of vigor
of spilled love
while life edifies
over the debris of a past life.

Americans of 1963, of this century
evangelizers of the new world
raise your heads
raise them high
to see from afar this land that constitutes our future.
With our remains:
with our hands and bones
with our organs,
with all our being,
with this burdened life,
built to survive,
see it
and do not faint
because we are tomorrow’s fire
the eternal youth
the gesture of those who love
giving everything
taking everything
for this life submerged in your voices.

Jacques Viau Renaud (1941—1965) was born in Haiti and raised in the Dominican Republic following his father’s exile in 1948. During the Dominican Revolution of 1965, he joined the rebel forces in support of ousted president Juan Bosch, fighting against the US backed dictatorship. He was killed in battle at age 23.

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About Ariel Francisco

Ariel Francisco is the author of the forthcoming All the Places We Love Have Been Left in Ruins (Burrow Press, 2024), Under Capitalism If Your Head Aches They Just Yank Off Your Head (Flowersong Press, 2022), and A Sinking Ship is Still a Ship (Burrow Press, 2020), and the translator of Haitian-Dominican poet Jacques Viau Renaud’s Poet of One Island (Get Fresh Books, 2024) and Guatemalan poet Hael Lopez’s Routines/Goodbyes (Spuyten Duyvil, 2022). A poet and translator born in the Bronx to Dominican and Guatemalan parents and raised in Miami, his work has been published in The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, Academy of American Poets, POETRY Magazine, The New York City Ballet, Latino Book Review, and elsewhere. He is Assistant Professor of Poetry and Hispanic Studies at Louisiana State University.