Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal

In the throat of the rooster

a dead man’s lament,

his fleeting soul 

deported to God’s country.

I heard the dead man

was often hungry.

He would lie down tired

in an empty bed

with his heart in pain.

He would walk the desert alone 

without a revolver or water.

He would sit down and rest

where a black crow sang

of murders back in town.

A choir of crows would come

to join in. They sang of

a dead man’s lament.

The tone was foreboding.

A crooked politician

took to the airwaves,

a cheap rodeo clown,

barking out nonsense about 

the Mexican-American border.

The time is getting late,

while the rooster sings

as the dead man’s soul

gets caught in a sandstorm.

The desert rose blooms

across the unforgiving desert.

Their petals are sharp.

The dead man’s body

toiled for years in a stolen land,

a land stolen more than once.

Turning over in graves and

twisting, all dead men,

some toothless, sing out like

the black crows and rooster,

in God’s country. They

rage against the dimming light,

corridos for the dying.

The dead man’s song 

will set nobody free.

That is plain to see.

Death will come for cheap 

rodeo clowns too. The dead will sleep

at ease tonight knowing this.