Paul Murphy

Victor Jara

Today and for the first time I listened to the songs of Victor Jara

I wondered why the General stiffed him up for singing such sweet songs?

The truth is that the songs were too beautiful

Victor Jara had glimpsed paradise, had nothing to fear.

(Then I heard him play on a zither or limpid flute and I thought

Yes he was probably worth plugging for that importunate tune.)

But supressed the thought, added a parantheses, it wasn't appropriate.

Woodie Guthrie lined the coffin with smears of orderly sandstone.

Bob Dylan tested it briefly, whacking his head on the great crimson quilt within.

Then Jara's body was broken within the limp tune, poured over Santiago

An electric or acoustic coffin floating on nothing but his poet's Nachlass.

Which I somehow and much later grasped today in my own gloom.