... "a revolutionary context is difficult to maintain"...

Maruja Mallo, Antro De Fosiles (1930)

Maruja Mallo, Basuras

the doors are open. we must pass through.
nothing is necessary but the bones that walk within us.
how they rattle in the bloodleting ...
it is inevitable that the heart of things the meat
is raw and it is blue. these poems retain blood.
life hurts us if we bother to feel, yes, work stinks,
leisure is without hope. the only way out is inward
and forward.
if we do not take it upon ourselves to struggle for
individual and social freedom our silence will damn us.
beauty pain terror hope dispair
these are all the same word
it is important that we remember to feel and this is
not so obvious as it sounds.
in these poem, the I is not exactly me, 
the you is not exactly you.
this growing things that strangle all life from luxury
and squeeze the almonds in a bitter embrace
the serpents take them down into the valerian underground
and the serpents feathers rake fortune into furrows.
it is an age where footholds are few and far between,
a revolutionary context is difficult to maintain,
yet we continue to seek and hold tight to the free spirit.
so follow the bones ...

 Hilary Booth, Preface I Am Rain, (Adelaide, Free Association, 1984)