listening for the truth...

from my anthology of must read (a)merican poems

Carolyn Forché

The Colonel

What you have heard is true. I was in his house. His wife carried a tray of coffee and sugar. His daughter filed her nails, his son went out for the night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol on the cushion beside him. The moon swung bare on its black cord over the house. On the television was a cop show. It was in English. Broken bottles were embedded in the walls around the house to scoop the kneecaps from a man's legs or cut his hands to lace. On the windows there were gratings like those in liquor stores. We had dinner, rack of lamb, good wine, a gold bell was on the table for calling the maid. The maid brought green mangoes, salt, a type of bread. I was asked how I enjoyed the country. There was a brief commercial in Spanish. His wife took everything away. There was some talk of how difficult it had become to govern. The parrot said hello on the terrace. The colonel told it to shut up, and pushed himself from the table. My friend said to me with his eyes: say nothing. The colonel returned with a sack used to bring groceries home. He spilled many human ears on the table. They were like dried peach halves. There is no other way to say this. He took one of them in his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a water glass. It came alive there. I am tired of fooling around he said. As for the rights of anyone, tell your people they can go fuck themselves. He swept the ears to the floor with his arm and held the last of his wine in the air. Something for your poetry, no? he said. Some of the ears on the floor caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the ears on the floor were pressed to the ground.

*

This is a fierce prose poem. “The Colonel” recounts a brutal world that stays long in the reader’s memory. A meeting of truth and art. Carolyn Forché, not focused on this piece as a poem when she was writing it, was reluctant to accept it as anything other than a bit of memoir. I’m glad she changed her mind.

Forché’s abilities as a poet are evident: “The moon swung bare on its black cord” and “My friend said to me with his eyes: say nothing” and “the ears on the floor caught this scrap of his voice”. The speaker’s voice is a strong and believable presence – “What you have heard is true” – that refuses to falter.

The matter-of-fact routine in the colonel’s world – his wife carrying a tray of sugar, the daughter filing her nails, the son going out for the evening – is a thin layer over the real horror of his world: “a pistol on the cushion” and “broken bottles ... embedded in the walls around his house”. Details of the meal, so wonderfully written, become a subtle background for the explosive ending. This is a poem about control and the loss of it.

The poem’s purpose, or at least one of them, is to make the reader aware of the brutal nature of this historical villain from El Salvador. Yet, the colonel, after spilling the human ears on the table, is the one who asks the disturbing question: “Something for your poetry, no?”. The question probes both poet and reader. Sometimes, the genesis for poetry is an utter darkness. A few of the ears “[catch] this scrap of his voice,” indicating a realization, an understanding, a certain knowledge. The poem ends with the image of other ears, “pressed to the ground”. This hideous image shows, not realization, but anticipation for something to come – a trembling in the ground – a voice of change.