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[constantine]

United Fruit Co.

When the trumpet sounded
everything was prepared on earth,
and Jehovah gave the world
to Coca-Cola Inc., Anaconda,
Ford Motors, and other corporations.
The United Fruit Company
reserved for itself the most juicy
piece, the central coast of my world,
the delicate waist of America.

It rebaptized these countries
Banana Republics,
and over the sleeping dead,
over the unquiet heroes
who won greatness,
liberty, and banners,
it established an opera buffa:
it abolished free will,
gave out imperial crowns,
encouraged envy, attracted
the dictatorship of flies:
Trujillo flies, Tachos flies
Carias flies, Martinez flies,
Ubico flies, flies sticky with
submissive blood and marmalade,
drunken flies that buzz over
the tombs of the people,
circus flies, wise flies
expert at tyranny.

With the bloodthirsty flies
came the Fruit Company,
amassed coffee and fruit
in ships which put to sea like
overloaded trays with the treasures
from our sunken lands.

Meanwhile the Indians fall
into the sugared depths of the
harbors and are buried in the
morning mists;
a corpse rolls, a thing without
name, a discarded number,
a bunch of rotten fruit
thrown on the garbage heap.

[theirishsea]

A protest, a satire, an elegy for the Indians---but I enjoyed reading the relevancy and the crispness of the poem. Maybe the United Fruit Company is (pun alert) second banana to the oil companies today but the exploitation of people and natural resources is very much alive. I think Neruda's poem will outlast the United Fruit Company.

[dannen]

there's always hell to pay when someone gets rich

wasn't there a bubblegum band called 1910 fruit gum company?

[constantine]

yummy, yummy, yummy

[BardmasterUB05]

You seldom go wrong with Neruda, and all of my S. American compadres know him well. He is like their travel bag.

[david eberhardt]

and i say- take direct action in response- not just words- your action will b poetry!

[constantine]

a good poem  - i like the sugared depths line. but, it is a little overt - perhaps the translation took away some of the tonal aspects that would improve the way the poem sounds/feels. the content is right on.