THE NORTH RIDING PROJECT

those who filled the bars and brothels of all the ports

and capitals in the region

(The Blue Cave, The Panties, Happyland),

those who sowed maize in foreign jungles, 

the kings of the crime pages,

those who no one ever knows where they’re from,

the best craftsmen in the world,

those who were mown down while crossing the border,

those who died of malaria

or scorpion or pit viper bites

in the hell of the banana plantations,

those who cry, drunk, on hearing the national anthem

under Pacific cyclones or in the snow-capped north,

Roque Dalton, Poem of Love (9-21), in Dalton/Trouble