diumenge, 9 de novembre del 2008

40 acres i una mula

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Quaranta acres i una mula era la recompensa promesa per alliberar els esclaus afroamericans després de la Guerra Civil. Quaranta acres és el títol del poema que Derek Walcott (premi Nobel de Literatura 1992) ha escrit amb motiu de la victòria de Barak Obama i que el Times va publicar el 5 de novembre.
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Forty acres
Out of the turmoil emerges one emblem, an engraving —
a young Negro at dawn in straw hat and overalls,
an emblem of impossible prophecy, a crowd
dividing like the furrow which a mule has ploughed,
parting for their president: a field of snow-flecked
cotton
forty acres wide, of crows with predictable omens
that the young ploughman ignores for his unforgotten
cotton-haired ancestors, while lined on one branch, is
a tense
court of bespectacled owls and, on the field's
receding rim —
a gesticulating scarecrow stamping with rage at him.
The small plough continues on this lined page
beyond the moaning ground, the lynching tree, the tornado's
black vengeance,
and the young ploughman feels the change in his veins,
heart, muscles, tendons,
till the land lies open like a flag as dawn's sure
light streaks the field and furrows wait for the sower.
oo
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Foto: Flickr (jwinfred)