by Martin Espada
The woman spoke
with the tranquility of shock:
the Army massacre was here.
But there were no peasant corpses,
no white crosses; even the houses
gone. Cameras chattered,
notebooks filled with rows of words
Some muttered that slaughter
is only superstition
in a land of new treaties and ballot boxes.
Everyone gathered mangoes
before leaving. An American reporter,
arms crowded with fruit, could not see
what he kicked jutting from the ground.
Fie glanced down and found his sneaker
pressing against the forehead
of a human skull, yellow
like the flesh of a mango.
He wondered how many skulls
are crated with the mangoes
for sale at market, how' many
grow yellow flesh and green skin
in the wooden boxes exported
to the States. This would explain,
he said to me,
why so many bodies
are found without heads
in El Salvador.
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