Kathy Swart is a librarian and writer who enjoys studying Brazil’s language, music, and dance. Her research led her to Dr. James Green’s work and Marcos’ story, which inspired this poem.

For Marcos Arruda upon Reading A Mother’s Cry
July 2013

North Carolina: Afternoon thunderheads cluster
waiting to release their floods.
Against the whiteness twin military jets soar
above the swooping cardinals.
Are they heading to the base
where we trained those who tortured you?

Washington D.C.: You fled here half-dead,
a student visa your only shield
against machine guns.
Years you struggled to stay
toiling like Sisyphus
in a nation too distracted to care.

You found America’s beauty soft.
Was it softness that made our officials
Shrug at the news
of the priest with his face shot away,
laugh at the photo
of the man on the parrot’s perch,
ignore the memo about the girl
suspended like that
43 hours
with no food or water?

Forty-odd years ago
you stood where I do, holding signs.
“Stop U.S. Aid to Brazil’s Dictatorship.”
They blocked you
so Nixon could take tea with Médici,
“The Monster.”

Standing at the Vietnam Memorial
I read names of the dead.
I think
they left some out.
Names of idealistic boys
bodies lashed to poles like wounded deer
screams drowning out the sizzle
of Army-issue generators,
tales of their last hours buried with their corpses
in the hills of Andorinha, Araguaia–
mute witnesses
to Brazil’s pact with the Devil
blessed by U.S. dollars.

Your mother’s cry has become my own.
As thunderheads surge over the Capitol
how I wish like them
to release the torrents.