The ParroTs

My friend Michael is the officer in charge of Somoto,there, by the border with Honduras, where the caught, he told me, contraband parrotsabout to be exported to the United Stateswhere they would learn to speak English. There were one hundred eighty-six parrots, and forty-seven had already died in their cages. And he returned them to the place from which they had comeAnd just as the truck was arriving at a place called “The Plains”close to the montains where the parrots once lived(the mountains seemed huge behind those plains)the parrots became agitated and began to flap their wings,pushing against the walls of their cages.And when the cages were openedthey all flew like arrows toward their mountains.That’s just what the Revolution did with us, I think:took us out of the cages in which wewere being carried off to speak English.And sent us back to the land from which we had been pulled. The green compas like parrots gave back to the parrots their green mountains.But forty-seven had died.

—ernesTo Cardenal