Mateo languishes in a gloomy room
that faces a swamp,
while gold men in their clean ward
receive a sea breeze so refreshing
that nurses call it The Doctor.
I stay in the despicable hospital
until I’m certain that Mateo
is regaining his strength
and his clarity
of mind,
even though it means convincing
tough American nurses
to let me break a few silly
gold-silver rules.
MATEO
GOLD NURSES
The white-winged hats of these women
comfort me, and so do their stubborn,
helpful minds. Most of them were hired
on my home island, where they gained
their healing experience
during the war they call Spanish-American,
even though it was really our war
for independence from Spain, a Cuban war
that was seized by the United States
for its own purposes.
Now, with the battles long forgotten,
I listen as gold nurses tell Anita
their bold opinions about voting rights
for women—all women, not just gold ones.
It’s the strangest idea I’ve ever heard,
but after a wild fever, wild ideas
seem to make sense.
ANITA
INDEPENDENCE
Suddenly, I understand why Mateo
was so eager to go off with Augusto,
even when it meant spending less
time with me.
I need time of my own too. Time to listen
to these nurses. Time to ride with them
when they invite me to patrol a bridge
on horseback—a bridge where gold men
throw goats and chickens down
into a river where crocodiles
thrash and writhe, fighting
for flesh, a cruel entertainment
for bored men.
The nurses explain that crocodiles
soon learn to expect food when they see
humans. The ugly sport sends reptiles
swimming upriver, to villages
where they hunt
children.
How often do bored people
dream up strange games
without thinking
of the wild
consequences?
So I ride with the nurses,
and I watch as they shoot rifles
to scare the cruel gold men
away.
GERTRUDE BEEKS
from the United States of America
Welfare Department of the National Civic Federation
REFORMS
When I worked with Jane Addams at Hull-House,
I knew we could improve living conditions
for women, but now President Roosevelt
has asked me to study the difficult daily lives
of sixty-five thousand workers—male and female—
from all over the world. I hardly know
where to start.
But I rally my courage, and with hordes
of reporters in tow, I boldly visit everyone
from stern Goethals
and that horrible
Square Foot Smith
right down to the poorest,
most miserable
islanders.
Wages. Hours. Sanitation. Recreation.
Clothing. Food. Every detail
matters.
I recommend hot showers for American
housing, and drying sheds for American
laundry, and social clubs for American
women, and good schools for American
children. I recommend fumigation crews
to spray mosquito-killing oil on puddles
and ponds in American gardens.
Without spray crews, there’s no hope
of controlling deadly malaria
and yellow fever.
But hospitals are my greatest challenge.
Men are separated, but the women’s area
is an emotional disaster, with pale ladies
from Boston and Iowa fuming
about having to share a ward
with dark-skinned washerwomen
from the Bahamas
and Martinique.
As soon as Americans arrive in Panama,
even northerners begin to act
like southerners.
But I am not expected to change
this strange system of racial separation.
All I can do for silver people is suggest
to that odious Square Foot Smith
that he give each laborer a blanket
to prevent pneumonia and an extra
and dried while the other
is worn.
Lives could be saved
by something as simple
as a few
scraps
of cloth.
But I don’t imagine
that Square Foot Smith
will care.
MATEO
AFTER A FEVER
Anita is still with me.
I’m hardly ever alone.
She brings food, she laughs
and sings, but even when
she’s silent,
the rhythm of her breathing
sounds musical,
like a cool breeze of survival
in this forest of butterflies
and vultures.
THE HOWLER MONKEYS
GHOSTLY
WE KNOW DEATH
WE FEAR DEATH
WE SMELL DEATH
WE HATE DEATH
OUR VOICES RISE
FROM THE TREES
ABOVE EVERY
GRAVEYARD
OF STRANGERS
OUR VOICES
CHASE DEATH
AND STRANGERS
AWAY
GO
GO
GO
THE MOSQUITOES
THIRST
We drink blood
We need blood
We pierce skin
We swallow
Blood.
We fly to blood
We crawl to blood
We swim to blood
We need
Blood.
THE VAMPIRE BATS
HUNGER
We sleep in caves all day
leap into dark air at night
run and bound on the ground
follow the heat
of blood
in veins
follow the rhythm
of a sleeper’s
breath
our teeth
shave fur
clip feathers
bite skin.
Any sleeping bird
beast
human
can fill
our hunger
as long as
there is
the heat
of blood.
THE VIOLET-GREEN SWALLOWS
SWOOPING
All evening in the sky
up and down
we dart
to gobble
mosquitoes
we swoop to escape
from the nets
of human hunters
who wear our glistening
colorful feathers
as decorations
on their plain
white hats.
THE TREES
IF ONLY
If we could move swiftly
we would run
leap
fly
but our only movement
is growth
less
and less
growth
after each sunrise
of dynamite explosions
&nbs
p; and sharpened blades
of the ruthless
ax.
MATEO
LEARNING
My thoughts are still scattered
by weakness, but this recurring fever
is teaching me to value every breath,
and the luxury of surviving makes me long
to ask questions about my silver life . . .
Why do gold men who fall ill receive
sick pay, while I get nothing?
Will I ever be brave enough to run away
from my contract and risk being arrested
as a vagrant?
I don’t want to end up with an iron collar
clamped around my neck, and an iron ball
dragged by a chain attached to the collar,
like those prisoners I sometimes see
working on the road gang.
HENRY
SO LITTLE TO GIVE
Each time the raging fever
overcomes Mateo, Anita delivers
quinine, and I share my food.
I’d love to offer more, but here
in this crate town, there’s not much
to give.
So I pound on a tree-trunk drum,
and I sing silly songs to help
my friend laugh, once he’s
well enough
to listen.
ANITA
VULNERABLE
When Mateo
is finally well enough
to return to his horrible job,
I’m alone,
so I climb a hill that offers
a spectacular view
of both oceans.
Mateo’s illness
has left me frightened.
How little it takes to destroy
the life
of a person
or a mountain.
AUGUSTO
DEMOTED
Goethals has just announced
that he will purge all misfits
from the gold payroll.
By misfits he means dark men.
Black Americans. Panamanians.
Puerto Ricans. All of us hired
as exceptions
to the segregation
rules.
That era is over now.
Suddenly, we are silver men.
Silver housing.
Silver food.
A silver level
of hope.
MATEO
MOVING DAY
We help Augusto pack,
borrow a mule, lift crates of books,
tie bundles of paintings, and carry
his fragile curiosities—each bone,
feather, egg, statue, tusk, and horn
a scientific treasure, yet so strange,
as if we have filled whole boxes
with eerie shadows.
We help move him into a rustic room
at La Cubana María, the clinic-inn
where Anita grew up, and where she
and old María tend their marvelous
garden of cures.
Augusto seems comforted as he strolls
along the pathways, bending over one flower
after another, to enjoy the variety
of smells.
AUGUSTO
WHEN DOORS CLOSE
My days of luxury are over,
but I won’t give in without
a protest.
I plan to challenge Goethals face to face,
man to man, just as the newspapers describe
when reporters write about his famous
“open hours,” a time especially designated
for hearing the grievances
of ordinary workers.
So I climb the one thousand steep steps
of Canal Commission headquarters
that lead up to an imposing building,
where I wait in a stuffy hallway,
along with hundreds of other
furious,
grumbling,
cursing,
demoted men.
When my turn to be heard
finally comes, I’m sent to the office
of a minor undersecretary
who does not even pretend
to listen.
I should have known
that Goethals’s “open hours”
would be open only
to gold men.
MATEO
UNREST
Rage spreads from demoted men
to anarchists, and then it spreads
all the way to gold men. Walkouts.
Sit-downs. Fistfights. Battles
with Canal Zone police.
When gold steam-shovel drivers
go out on strike, open hours
don’t do them any good.
Goethals merely fires them and hires
new men, strikebreakers shipped in
from far away.
Even the gold nurses are threatening
to strike if Goethals persists in demanding
that they pay for seamstresses
to make their new uniforms.
HENRY
SKY PONDS
When I’m suddenly transferred
to a fumigation crew, I feel
as though I’ve been delivered
from misery.
No more digging. No more mud.
I receive a ladder and bucket,
a spray hose, the oil . . .
Climbing rung by rung, up, up, up,
to the crowns of tall trees, I begin
to see how impossible it will be
to spray every single puddle
in all of Panama.
Tiny pools of rain are trapped
at the bases of orchid leaves
and other air plants—flowers
that dangle from high branches,
their naked roots drinking
from drifting mist
instead of soil . . .
Sky ponds and air plants
are things I learned about by listening
to Augusto. Sometimes, science
seems just as mysterious
as church.
There are tadpoles in the sky ponds,
and mosquito larvae, and bright
blue frogs. I spray the oil on all
those creatures, watching them
vanish beneath a haze
of rainbow-glazed
death.
When lunchtime comes,
I climb down the ladder
rung by rung, and then
I lean that ladder
against a tree trunk,
and when a foreman shows me
where to line up for lunch,
I see that there aren’t
any chairs or benches,
so I slip away
into the forest,
and I just keep
walking
and walking
until I’m gone.
MATEO
ONE DARING ESCAPE LEADS TO ANOTHER
After Henry disappears, I accept
la vieja María’s invitation to move
out of the crate town, where police
are on the prowl, seeking
fugitives.
La Cubana María Inn is almost
empty. Big new American hotels
and hospitals are putting Anita’s
adopted abuelita out of business,
but the old woman does not seem
too worried.
Instead, she sits down and visits,
telling tales and asking questions
about our shared homeland.
Remembering the island
makes me wistful.
I speak of places
I barely remember.
Places I visited with Mami,
before I started hiding
from Papi.
A zoo.
A park.
A café.
The beach.
Now I’m hiding again,
hiding from the police,
because I won’t go back
to that track-moving,
backbreaking,
brain-shattering
culebra, cucaracha,
serpent, cockroach
cut, slide
hell.
AUGUSTO
NO ESCAPE
Perhaps I’m not as brave
as Henry and Mateo.
Or maybe it’s just my foolish hope
that continuing to study and map
the ever-changing slopes
of the Serpent Cut
really might save
a few lives . . .
so I ride the labor train
down into mud, and at the end
of each workday, I ride it back,
and on Sundays, at last,