I am surprised to find myself reading
with great interest
things like
cotton harvest twenty five percent up
on last year
coffee exports US $124.2 million
17.5% up on last year
a 13.6% increase in sugar is expected
maize production down 5.9%
gold 10% down
because of contra attacks in that region
likewise shellfish…
When did such data ever interest me before?
It is because now our wealth
however little
is to be
for everyone.
So it is
for the people,
love of the people
this interest.
Love is now the meaning of these figures.
Gold dug from the earth, solid sun
cut into blocks, will become electric light
drinking water for the poor.
Translucent molluscs, reminiscent of women,
the smell of a woman,
come from the sea, its submarine caves
and coloured gardens of coral to be
pills, desks.
Matter's holiness.
Mother, you know what a glass of milk is worth.
Soft cloud-whirl cotton
– we went singing to the cotton-cutting
in our fingers we held clouds –
will become, roads, zinc roofs,
the economic has become poetic
or rather, with the Revolution
economics now is love.
This poem is published in Nicaraguan New Times by Ernesto Cardenal, translated by Dinah Livingstone (Journeyman Press, London 1988). After the triumph of the 1979 Nicaraguan Revolution, which toppled the dictator Somoza, poet and Catholic priest Ernesto Cardenal became Minister of Culture in the Sandinista government.
Translated by Dinah Livingstone