| |
| YOU take the street on which the large church fronts | |
| And go some twenty blocks and up a hill | |
| And past the three-arch bridge until you come | |
| To Guadalupe, where the houses are | |
| No stately Spanish buildings, flat and lazy, | 5 |
| As in the center of the town you see them— | |
| Heavy with some three centuries upon them, | |
| Accustomed to the sunlight and the earthquakes, | |
| To sudden dawns, long days and sudden sunsets, | |
| Half bored, you fancy, by these ways of nature— | 10 |
| But little things, ugly almost, and frail, | |
| With low red roofs and flimsy rough-cut doors, | |
| A trifle better than an Indian hut, | |
| Not picturesque, just dreary commonplace— | |
| As commonplace and dreary as the flats | 15 |
| Here, in your cities, where your poor folks live— | |
| And yet, you notice, glad the sun is shining, | |
| And glad a cooling wind begins to blow, | |
| Too glad, too purely, humbly glad to say it; | |
| And all the while afraid of the volcanoes, | 20 |
| Holding their breath lest these should wake to crush them. | |
| Look through these doors and see the walls inside | |
| With holy pictures, saints and angels, there, | |
| Sold to my people, reverenced by them; | |
| Look through these doors and see the children, playing | 25 |
| Or wrangling, just as children will elsewhere; | |
| Look through these doors and see the women, sewing, | |
| Setting their tables, doing the thousand things | |
| Hardly worth noticing, that women do | |
| Around their houses, meaning life to them. | 30 |
| And if you listen you may hear them singing— | |
| Not anywhere are better songs than theirs. | |
| It’s nothing thrilling! Tourists do not care, | |
| And if you hire a common guide he’ll never | |
| Think of directing you, to see this mere | 35 |
| Unhonored dailiness of people’s lives | |
| That is the soil the roots of beauty know. | |
| |
| Yet, if you wish to know my country—it’s there. | |
| |
| The old Cathedral that the Spaniards built, | |
| With hand-carved altars for two thousand saints; | 40 |
| The ruined fortress where they say that Nelson, | |
| Who was a pirate then, lost his left eye | |
| Fighting a woman, all that tourists see— | |
| That’s what my country used to be, not now. | |
| The “dear” hotel, with palm-trees in the courtyard, | 45 |
| And a self-playing piano drumming rags; | |
| The shops of German, English and French owners; | |
| The parlors of the ruling class, adorned | |
| With much the same bad taste as in New York— | |
| That’s not my country either! But the rows | 50 |
| Of ugly little houses where men dwell, | |
| And women—all too busy living life | |
| To think of faking it—that is my country, | |
| My Nicaragua, mother of great poets. | |
| And when you see that, what? Just this: Despite | 55 |
| Newspaper revolutions and so forth, | |
| The different climate and the different | |
| Traditions and the different grandfathers, | |
| My people are pretty much the same as yours: | |
| Folks with their worries and their hopes about them, | 60 |
| Working for bread and for a something more | |
| That ever changes, hardly twice the same; | |
| Happy and sad, the very joy and sorrow | |
| Your people feel; at heart just plainly human: | |
| And that is worth the journey to find out. | 65 |
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