Ferreira Gullar #1

THE DIRTY BOMB

I’m introducing the word
diarrhea into poetry.
Not for the sake of the word,
but for what it makes you see.

Flowers never say it all
and sorrow’s much too moot.
Without words that are real
the poets will go mute.

In dictionaries, each word
is just an abstract idea.
More than a word, diarrhea
is a weapon that kills or wounds.

It kills, much better than knives
or bullets from a rifle,
men, women and children
in the backlands of Brasil.

For example, in Rio Grande
do Norte, diarrhea
takes seven of every ten kids
and leads them off to slaughter.

I’m talking about a D-Bomb
that explodes inside a worker
when the slow fuse of hunger
burns all the way down.

It’s a soft time-bomb
(the clock is your heart)
that readies its explosion
while the people work.

The bomb is stuck inside us
long before our birth.
When life is quick inside us
the bomb starts to tick.

This bomb has been inside us
for countless centuries.
It detonates diarrhea
in bodies that can’t eat.

It’s not a clean explosion,
it’s a lukewarm, dirty bomb
that so softly rids
the world of a million kids,

especially in the northeast
(but not only there),
like in Piauí, where hunger
spreads out everywhere.

Now it’s time to ask ourselves
how did this all start?
Who built this bomb and wired it
to the human heart?

Who is it that comes and steals
every coffee bush we plant?
Who eats the rice we reap
and aren’t allowed to eat?

The ones who turn our coffee
into someone else’s money,
they light the fuse of the dirty
bomb inside our bodies.

The ones who take our rice
and give us hunger in return,
they light the fuses in our bodies
and watch while they burn.

But now we need to pull
with our own strong hands
the hunger-fuse that kills
us and all our kin.

But now we need to learn
how to stop the saboteurs
who build the bomb of hunger
and plant it in the worker.

But most of all we must
fight and fight and never stop
until inside each of us
we wreck the hunger bomb
and build the bomb of hope.

— Ferreira Gullar (from DENTRO DA NOITE VELOZ [IN SPEEDING NIGHT], 1962-1975).