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Sing
Zapatista
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March 6, 2001
- Tepoztlán,
State of Morelos, México
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Sing the word Tepoztlán, Place of Copper,
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pueblo of cobblestone
and purple blossoms
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amid the cliffs,
serpent god ablaze with plumage
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peering from the
shaven rock.
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Sing the word Zapata, bandoliers crossing his chest
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like railroad tracks
about to explode, rebellion's black iris
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in 1910, in his eye
the peasants of Morelos husking rifles
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stalk by stalk from
the cornfields.
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Sing the word Zapatista, masked rebels riding now
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in a caravan without
rifles, tracking the long rosary of blood
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beaded and stippled
across the earth by other rebels the color of earth,
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bus panting uphill
saddled with ghosts dangling legs from the roof.
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Sing the words Félix Serdán, age eleven when he straddled the
horse
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to ride with Zapata,
witness to a century's harvest of campesino skulls
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abundant as melons,
twined in white mustache and blanket
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beside the comandantes
on the platform.
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Sing the word comandante, twenty-three of the faceless
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masked in black so
their brown skin could grow eyes and mouths,
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smuggling Mayan
tongues to the microphone in the plaza
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where the church
drowses in dreams of Latin by rote.
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Sing the word durito, hard little one, scarab on a banner
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draped across the face
of the church where bells bang
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to welcome the rebels,
as the scarab-people cluster below
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shouting their vow
never to be crushed by the shoe.
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Sing the word zapateado, tap and stamp of women dancing in the
plaza
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to the hummingbird
rhythms of Veracruz, guitarist in fedora
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watching his fingers
skitter like scarabs across the wood,
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shawled dancer lost in
the percussion of her feet.
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Sing the word Marcos, el Subcomandante, and listen
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when he says above the
crowd chanting his name:
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Marcos does not
exist. I am a window. I am a mirror.
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I am you. You are
me.
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from
Alabanza: New & Selected Poems
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