The United Fruit Company

Pablo Neruda
of modest blood and marmalade,
When the trumpet sounded, it was

drunken flies who zoom

all prepared on the earth,

over the ordinary graves,

the Jehovah parcelled out the earth

circus flies, wise flies

to Coca Cola, Inc., Anaconda,

well trained in tyranny.

Ford Motors, and other entities:

The Fruit Company, Inc.

Among the blood-thirsty flies

reserved for itself the most succulent,

the Fruit Company lands its ships,

the central coast of my own land,

taking off the coffee and the fruit;

the delicate waist of America.

the treasure of our submerged

It rechristened its territories

territories flow as though

as the Banana Republics

on plates into the ships.

and over the sleeping dead,

over the restless heroes

Meanwhile Indians are falling

who brought about the greatness, the

into the sugared chasms

liberty and the flags,

of the harbours, wrapped

it established the comic opera:

for burials in the mist of the dawn:

abolished the independencies,

a body rolls, a thing

presented crowns of Caesar,

that has no name, a fallen cipher,

unsheathed envy, attracted

a cluster of the dead fruit

the dictatorship of the flies,

thrown down on the dump.

Trujillo flies, Tacho flies,

Carias flies, Martinez flies,
Ubico flies, damp flies