The Chilean Episode

Two thousand feet in the belly of the earth So near the opulence of golden ore And so far the poor man's dream of worth From the falling sweat of toil Around the Chilean house The wringing hands toll in silent prayer This early subterranean image rise Before the stark and brimming eyes Of thirty three souls in the chasm of purgatory cast Held rigid for sixty nine days of fast From food, family, freedom to choose And the narrow ledge Over the collective precipice of hope. Testing all Dante's vision here And proving false a deeper perfidy Than exploitation of a working class There is no vulnerability like being poor. The limits of mortality Assigned us, no other boundary knowing Yet one day short the chasm keeps Behind the pace of prophetic analogy Of three score years and ten. Out of the dungeon carved for greed A sudden caving in of hell Yet stubbornly resisting, the church bells chime Joyfully again, another salvation thrilled with grace. The Andean anxiety capsuled sink Hanging from the edge of a nerve Binding tautly the national frame Our ingenuity is a hope of resurrection too Again and again through misted eyes And suddenly the tension drained of silence Through the river of men Broke in a flood of cheers. This is not 20,000 league beneath the sea Nor a giant leap For workers scraping rocks for bread The only fiction is the process That continues to hold life ransom for some No new belief will come Like dragon's breath consuming the cruel past No utopia shall rise Outside the shadow of the cross The earth travailing in our dread Bring forth their souls Thickening the umbilical bond So much After sixty nine days, the adaptation urges The heart to keep its place And they convicted will descend again. We seek in life still a quite familiar space In all the changes we taunt with ambition We keep our old environment Of prohibited movements and meager conditions All hope long Praying for a little escape Why else would some still shock fettered Declare ... to addicted applause We shall soon go under again. My soul rejoices today To see the grave defeated impromptu Pumping the heart in victory. I celebrate The upswelling of faith, The certainty in the heart when we pray The big news of good Out of the dismal events of his coming The final exultation When the trembling mountains tumble Broken feathers and unbroken screams And I Looping in the cradle of light Confirm my new birth Above the eagle's flight; And all the miners safely home at last.