La tormenta
La muerte es una tormenta.
Death is a storm,
he said.
And the village
is an anthill scattering.
Héctor is in the Army
of El Salvador:
conscripted at fourteen,
a deserter three years later.
A boy with wide ears
and one shirt,
he walked across Guatemala,
México and Arizona to get here,
almost swallowed
too much river and mud
at the border.
He wants to be called Tony
in the United States.
In the basement,
partway through
translated instructions
and where he will eat today,
Tony pulls the hood
of a big borrowed coat
over his head and bodyrocks,
a monk shadowboxing
at the clang of church bells,
moving to a song
with a distant helicopter beat,
la tormenta
and the anthill scattering.
by Martín Espada
from Alabanza
W.W. Norton, 2003