[Currently watching the Eduardo Galeano reading from the Lannan Literary video series. Galeano is bouncing back and forth between English and Spanish readings which is even cooler when he decides to read the story of Tracy Hill from Connecticut in Spanish because in Galeano’s world La Hill’s story can happen anywhere or in any language.
Galeano has a wonderful reading style—expressive, detailed, no nonsense, ironic and so very focused. He’s also can be dryly hysterical like when he dedicates “Window on a Successful Man” to the World Bank in a personal letter but wonders why the World Bank hasn’t written back.
Another one of Galeano’s poems has me thinking about the murder of Oscar Grant and how this is not an isolated incident. This happens all over the world, regardless of government, in the country, definitely in the City, and in every language and most times without the benefit of a reliable witness but always a reporter (or chismoso) who is willing to paint an easy portrait of the street kid, jibaro, homleless, fulano, homeboy, cualquier, clocker, gangbanger, illegal, mojado, junkie, tecato. You know, a nobody. The nobody who, Galeano reminds us, is far from nothing.]
The Nobodies
Fleas dream of buying themselves a dog, and nobodies dream
of escaping poverty: that one magical day good luck will
suddenly rain down on them- will rain down in buckets. But
good luck doesn’t even fall in a fine drizzle, no matter
how hard the nobodies summon it, even if their left hand is
tickling, or if they begin the new day with their right foot, or
start the new year with a change of brooms.
The nobodies: nobody’s children, owners of nothing. The
nobodies: the no ones, the nobodied, running like rabbits,
dying through life, screwed every which way.
Who don’t speak languages, but dialects.
Who don’t have religions, but superstitions.
Who don’t create art, but handicrafts.
Who don’t have culture, but folklore.
Who are not human beings, but human resources.
Who do not have names, but numbers.
Who do not appear in the history of the world, but in the
police blotter of the local paper.
The nobodies, who are not worth the bullet that kills them.