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BROKEN RHYTHMS; IN A MEXICAN LABOR CAMP, by                    
First Line: La golondrina
Last Line: New music?
Subject(s): Chicanos; Migrant Labor; Music & Musicians; Mexican Americans; Migratory Workers; Agricultural Laborers


"La Golondrina"
Thrummed
To a lame-stringed guitar.

Soft-eyed women
With plaited braids
At soggy tubs.
No gurgling dips
In flowing streams
To naiad laughter.

Metreless brown hands
Shaping limp tortillas
From grocery flour.
Lost the old tuned
Spat! Spat!
Of pestled corn.

Fierce gas flames
Scorching frijoles.
No long soft glows
Of charcoal, fanned
To long slow thoughts.

Behold that once-schoolmaster,
Slight-built and scholarly,
Nodding, workworn,
Over Spanish poems.

Note that carver of images
Whose dream-troubled eyes
Study with rue
His stiff track-mending hands.

Broken rhythms
All their craft and art.
Tune-lost their lives
In exile....
America,
Can you give them
New Music?





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