On Reading One Hundred Years of Solitude

We believe in the ascension.
Remember Remedios the Beauty
Who rose before us
And flew on to heaven?
Everyone stood gaping.

We believe in second comings,
And the raising of the dead.
Remember Melquiades
Who passed on so long ago?
All our sons have spoken with him.

Miracles, mere miracles.

Nature has always embraced
our deepest desires.
Remember Mauricio Babilonia
And her yellow butterflies?
They were all over the house.

And remember when it rained tiny
flowers
So that the whole town had to shovel
them away?
More miracles made to spare us
The prosaic and mundane.

So hush!

Speak not of banana companies,
Nor of electrified chicken yards,
And soldiers armed with machine guns
Enforcing Martial Law.
Those things do not happen here.

Hush!

Heed not Arcadio Segundo
And his dangerous babbling
About massacres,
And babies corpses being loaded onto
trains,
And two hundred freight cars
Carrying three thousand dead.

Ours has always been a peaceful and
happy village.

by Rick Lybeck
from Sheepshead Review; Fall 2003