"The Colonel" by Carolyn Forche

On my drive up to Long Island, listening to the "Poetry off the Shelf" podcast, I found myself blown away by the poem I'll paste below. I'll also link to the longer article about documentary poetry that accompanies it. I am a bit skeptical about the label "documentary poetry," but it is an interesting article nonetheless.

Anyway, here's the poem (some of the formatting gets messed up in blogger--the line breaks look wonky--check out the original here):

The Colonel

by Carolyn Forché

WHAT YOU HAVE HEARD is true. I was in his house. His wife carried

a tray of coffee and sugar. His daughter filed her nails, his son went

out for the night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol on the

cushion beside him. The moon swung bare on its black cord over

the house. On the television was a cop show. It was in English.

Broken bottles were embedded in the walls around the house to

scoop the kneecaps from a man's legs or cut his hands to lace. On

the windows there were gratings like those in liquor stores. We had

dinner, rack of lamb, good wine, a gold bell was on the table for

calling the maid. The maid brought green mangoes, salt, a type of

bread. I was asked how I enjoyed the country. There was a brief

commercial in Spanish. His wife took everything away. There was

some talk then of how difficult it had become to govern. The parrot

said hello on the terrace. The colonel told it to shut up, and pushed

himself from the table. My friend said to me with his eyes: say

nothing. The colonel returned with a sack used to bring groceries

home. He spilled many human ears on the table. They were like

dried peach halves. There is no other way to say this. He took one

of them in his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a water

glass. It came alive there. I am tired of fooling around he said. As

for the rights of anyone, tell your people they can go fuck them-

selves. He swept the ears to the floor with his arm and held the last

of his wine in the air. Something for your poetry, no? he said. Some

of the ears on the floor caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the

ears on the floor were pressed to the ground.

May 1978

Amazing, right? That image of a bag of ears will stay with me.

Here's Philip Metre''s take on the poem (taken from the article I've linked to above):

"Carolyn Forche’s years in El Salvador (1978–81) working as a human rights activist led to this poem, in which a poet visits a colonel who lives a privileged but barricaded existence in his country. Forche’s poem, written in prose, offers itself as a documentary retelling. It ominously begins: 'What you have heard is true.' Yet this poem is interesting precisely because it contains both a documentary veneer and plenty of hints of literary artifice. In other words, it suggests the highly fictive nature of the life the colonel leads behind his walled compound, as well as the literary aspect of all documentary poetry. In the poem, the moon itself 'swung bare on its black cord over the house,' as if it were an interrogation lamp or a stage prop."