James Scully

 

Now Sing

 

NOW sing: the guards howling

beat him with obscenities.

          But he did.

His legend is

He was singing

                     Venceremos

when they shot him.

Even for them, it was too much

 

they killed him,

they couldn’t kill him enough.

 

Victor Jara

                sin guitarra,

who’d held out with bloody stumps

                                                 and sung

 

 

—from Santiago Poems, 1975

 


 Santiago Poems
 Curbstone Press 1975