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The God of the Weather-Beaten Face | Martín Espada
for Camilo Mejía, conscientious objector
The gods gathered:
the crusader god took off his helmet,
the desert warrior god stood his shield in the corner,
the sword-maker god sat between them sharpening blades,
the bombardier god spread his maps on the table,
the god who collects infidel heads traded trophies
with the god who collects heathen scalps,
the god of gold opened his handkerchief
for the god of oil to wipe his dripping chin,
the god who punishes sin with boils scratched his boils
and called the meeting to order.
And the gods said: War.
Sergeant Mejía heard the prisoner moan under the hood
as the guards shoved him into a steel closet, then pounded
with a sledgehammer on the door until the moaning stopped;
heard machine-gun fire slicing heads from necks
with a roar that would be the envy of swords;
heard a soldier sobbing in the toilet for the headless boy
who would open his eyes every time the soldier closed hiw own.
Sometimes a song drifts up
through the moaning and sledgehammers,
machine guns and sobbing.
Sometimes a voice floats above pandemonium
the way a seagull floats over burning ships.
Sergeant Mejía heard his father’s song,
the peasant mass of Nicaragua:
Vos sos el Dios de los pobres,
el Dios humano y sencillo,
el Dios que suda en la calle,
el Dios de rostro curtido.
You are the God of the poor,
the human and simple God,
the God who sweats in the street,
the God of the weather-beaten face.
Iraq was crowded with the faces of this God.
They watched as Sergeant Mejía said no to the other gods,
miniscule word, a pebble, a grain of rice,
but the word flipped that table at the war council,
where the bombardier god had just dealt
the last hand to the god of oil,
and cards with dates of birth and death,
like tiny tombstones, fluttered away.
Sergeant no more, Camilo Mejía walked to jail.
Commanders fed the word coward
to the sniffing microphones of reporters
who repeated obediently: coward.
The cell crowded with faces too, unseen travelers
wandering in from a century of jails:
union organizer, hunger striker, freedom rider,
street corner agitator, conscientious objector.
The God of the weather-beaten face,
dressed as an inmate steering a mop,
smuggled in the key one day, and Camilo Mejía
walked with him through epiphany’s gate.
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