Chili by Hans Tentije

Chili I watched Pablo Neruda's funeral on television, yesterday evening, kitsch-flowers were showered straight from Macchu Picchu with overwhelming splendour upon his coffin, like orange blossoms and hundreds of people sang, in Spanish, the International it was as if he wrote it himself somewhere in Santiago a man lay on the street shot to bits under some newspapers where maybe the false news about Allende's dead was still rustling a bit later an admiral of the military junta appeared on the screen to announce that the left-wing terror was over that the poor would at last be better off what else could I do, goddamnit than to wish a slow, wasting copper poisoning upon him just that and nothing else but at the same moment, your lines, Neruda, came to my mind, slovenly, yet still poignant enough: 'I want to meet death together with the poor who lacked the time to look at him closer beaten up as they are those who splendidly divided and allotted the heavens'

Hans Tentije - 1943 [photographer unknown]

Original title: Chili. From: Is dit genoeg een stuk of wat gedichten, deel 1 - Elsevier Manteau, Amsterdam/Antwerpen, 1982.