The Singing Tree
poems about Corby
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpn2kxZkGcs
ADELA & CARMEN
(for Adela and Carmen Ramirez)
ADELA
People sometime say to me,
“Adela, why so miserable face?”
They do not know what these eyes have seen,
they do not feel displaced.
It is 22nd May 1960,
I am 8 years old in my home country;
we are happy Chilean family
living in countryside
near river, by the coast.
My parents run restaurant
and bakery in town.
The house begins to shake,
my dad turns colour of ghost
and orders all of us ourside;
we are falling down,
the road is rolling like warm dough;
the house heaves a final sigh
and crumbles to the ground.
Dad shouts: “Run! Everyone!
Run to the mountains!”
He knows tsunami will follow earthquake;
as we claw our way to the mountains,
dad says, “Don’t look down;” but we do:
our home, restaurant, bakery, town,
all gone, for good;
the whole valley is flooded;
it is most powerful ‘quake recorded
in history of the world.
When I see images on tv
of Japan, I feel for those people,
I know their pain.
In the mountains we mix
with native Indians who know
how to accept nature without complaining.
We have nowhere to go,
so we move to capital, Santiago.
11th September 1973:
my son is hiding under bed
from the soldiers; there is gun
in my back, gun to my head;
friends and family murdered in front of me.
We live in La Reina,
a city commune in Santiago.
There has been military coup
against President Allende,
with blessing of Richard Nixon
and Henry Kissinger of U.S.A.
The soldiers are searching for my husband
who is on way to Argentina.
General Pinochet has rounded up
40,000 supporters of Allende
and herded them into National Stadium
to be tortured and slaughtered.
As a child I was “mascotta”
for the party; at meetings
I would be eyes on the street.
As young woman I believe in people
and politics of the Left Wing;
my husband designs buildings for Allende;
but I do not want to become lost,
one of the desaparecidos.
I am granted visa in Argentina
by the British Embassy:
after two long years we join my husband
in England where he has job in steelworks
as electrical engineer.
My son, Esteban, is 6 years old
when we come to Corby: it is snowing;
the people are very helpful,
concerned about our health;
but I trust nobody,
keep myself to myself.
We have more children: Anita-Maria
and Carmen; but even now
there are no Chilean families
in Corby: it is hard to belong
with no community of your own;
I am very lonely.
My husband struggles with drink
and I have so much inside my head
that will not go away.
We separate and now he is dead.
I despise alcohol, but I drink
bottle of wine the day Pinochet dies.
February 2010:
Anita is living in Chile;
she is with boyfriend and her son, Ben,
at seaside resort of Pelluhe.
She sends email to her sister:
“Having fantastic, restful time –
Mother Nature at its best.”
Saturday 27th February,
50 years on from 1960,
massive earthquake strikes Chile.
Pelluhe is flattened and washed away
within the hour by the power
of tsunami wave.
Esteban and Carmen try to contact them:
night before earthquake
Anita, Ben and boyfriend
caught bus home to Talca,
which is also destroyed.
We are distraught until Anita calls
to let us know they are safe,
not like thousands of others who
were not saved or have nowhere to go.
Esteban lives in U.S.A.,
but never forgets where he comes from
and wants to return to Chile;
Anita was born here
and wants to return to U.K.
We are like blind people
on pilgrimage to find identities.
Where is beginning of journey?
Where is end?
My other daughter, Carmen, lives here
with me; she is my best friend.
CARMEN
Some of the kids at Carmen’s school
didn’t know what to make of this cool
gypsy-looking beauty,
so they simply called her “paki”.
British-born but darker than her mother,
she was never bothered by being “other”
when it came to ticking boxes.
At age 15, she visited Chile
and was overwhelmed by fresh food
and the size of her extended family;
Chileans are empanadas and cazuelas,
English are Yorkshire puddings and Cornish pasties.
The Chilean in her likes to party,
she is romantic and passionate,
gesticulates her conversation -
if she feels it, you see it.
The English in her is still water running deep,
controlled emotions bubbling underneath,
worried what others might think.
By her own estimation
Carmen is 30% English/ 70% Chilean;
in other words, “second generation”.
Age 15, Carmen also discovered who she was
on the inside and came out
with a fierce independence and pride.
She met someone special at a Halloween party:
an older woman, with a teenage son,
half-Scottish half-Lithuanian;
just two women getting on with their lives
accepted by all sides of the families;
no earthquakes, no genocide.
Carmen knows about surviving,
her parents taught her well;
life is not easy but it is amazing.
as far as she can tell.
