Counterpoint; TheExcercise...

3. Onomatopoeia
ON POETRY
by Juan Gelman, from Unthinkable Tenderness
translated from the Spanish by Joan Lindgren
a couple of things have to be said /
that nobody reads it much /
that those nobodies are few and far between /
that everyone’s caught up in the world crisis / and
with the business of putting food on the table /
and that’s no small problem / I remember
when my uncle juan died of hunger / he used to say
no problem since he’d forgotten how to eat anyway /
but the problems came later / when
there was no cash for the coffin /
and when finally the official truck came from the city
to take him away uncle juan turned into a bird /
the guys from the city looked at him with contempt / complaining
they were always being given a hard time / that
they were men and men was what they buried / and not
birds like uncle juan / especially
since unc was singing cheep-cheep all the way to the municipal
crematorium /
which to them seamed like a disrespect they didn’t like one bit /
and when they slapped him to shut him up /
the cheep-cheep was heard in the cab of the truck and even their ears