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Soldier's Rest (9999)

Author Information
Writer: Roque Dalton (1935 - 1975)
Writer's Country: El Salvador
Original Language: Spanish
Genre: Poetry
Event: Latin American Repression

The dead are growing more restless each day.

They were easy to handle before:
We gave them a starched collar a flower
We showered them with praise on a honor list;
We buried them in a National Plot
Among the noble shades
Under the monstrous slabs of marble.

The dead man signed up with the hope of being remembered:
He joined the ranks once more
And marched to the beat of our time-honored music.
But wait a second:
The dead
Have changed since then.

They're sarcastic now
They ask questions.

I think they've caught on
That they outnumber us more every day.

Credit: Excerpted from Small Hours of the Night: Selected Poems of Roque Dalton, translated by Hardie St. Martin. Curbstone Press, 1996.

Biography:

Roque Dalton was born on May 14, 1935 in El Salvador. He was the son of Winnall Dalton, an American bank robber from Kansas who escaped down to El Salvador and marrried a Salvadoran nurse. Dalton went to Santiago to study law in the National University of Chile. There, he established close relationships to Leftist students, developing a great interest for Socialism. When he returned to El Salvador, he enrolled himself in law school in the National University of El Salvador and in 1955 he founded El Círculo Literario Universitario (The University Literary Circle), which put together the country's most recognized literary figures.

Roque Dalton was already politically active in El Salavdor when the Cuban revolution started in 1959. That same year he was arrested, but the day before his execution, Col. José María Lemus was overthrown from presidency, and Roque's life was spared. In 1961 he travelled to Havana, where he was welcomed by the Casa de las Américas (or House of the Americas), a gathering place for many exiled leftist Latin American writers. Dalton returned clandestinely to El Salvador in 1965 but was jailed again. After escaping, he spent time as a correspondent in Prague. Returning to Central America, he trained as a guerilla soldier ans joined the People's Revolutionary Army (ERP). Dalton stressed the importance of establishing bonds with the mass organizations from civil society. However, some members of the guerrilla army disagreed with him. They accused him of trying to divide ERP. This group condemmened him to death, and executed him the 10th of May 1975.

Bibliography:

Small Hours of the Night: Selected Poems of Roque Dalton, edited by Hardie St. Martin, Willimantic, CT : Curbstone Press, 1996.

El Salvador at War: a Collage Epic / Poetry, edited by Marc Zimmerman, Minneapolis, MN : MEP Publications, 1988.

Clandestine Poems, edited by Barbara Paschke and Eric Weaver; translated by Jack Hirschman, San Francisco, CA : Solidarity Publications, 1984.