Explore "Machado" by Pablo Neruda on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
In Cuba Machado harnessed his Island with machines, imported torments manufactured in the United States, machine guns spat, mowing down phosphorescence, the marine nectar of Cuba, and the student with a flesh wound was cast into the water where the sharks finished
His Excellency's job.
The assassin's hand reached
Mexico, and Mella spun into the street like a bloodied discus thrower while Cuba burned, blue, papered in lottery, mortgaged with sugar.
Martínez (1932)
Martínez, the quack from El Salvador, distributes flasks of multicolored remedies which the ministers accept with deep bows and scraping.
The little vegetarian witch doctor passes his time prescribing in the palace while torturous hunger howls in the cane fields.
Martínez then decrees: and in a few days twenty thousand assassinated peasants decompose in the villages that Martínez orders burned with ordinances of hygiene.
Back in the Palace he returns to his syrups, and receives the American ambassador's swift congratulations.
"Western culture is safe," says he-
"western Christianity, and besides, good business, banana concessions and control of customs."
And together they drink a long glass of champagne, while hot rain falls on the putrid gatherings of the charnel house.