Cesáreo “Chacho” Martínez’s Donde Mancó el Árbol de la Espada y Arcoíris is one of the Peruvian poet’s “conjunctural poems”. Written to address the specific political conditions of the end of the Morales Bermudez dictatorship in 1980, the text builds on his earlier Cinco Razones Puras Para Comprometerse (Con la Huelga), published in the wake of the 1977 general strikes in Peru. Martinez’s work demands that the reader work through their political conditions via a dialectical poetics that must arrive at a praxis beyond the passivity of the page. Though the internal conflict between the Sendero Luminoso and the military would end hopes of the type of party politics that Donde Mancó el Árbol de la Espada y Arcoíris proposes, Martínez’s poem sets out a political/poetic matrix that continues to resonate in the Peruvian present, dominated as it is by political cynicism and a kleptocratic right-wing post-neoliberal extractivist government.
—Judah Rubin
from Donde Mancó El Arbol de la Espada y el Arcoiris
And the camel, no matter how clean, will have to see itself in the mirror.
But who am I that my body turns in disquiet that my being sweats distrust and confusion
That I see my soul’s objects watered specular and without glory who am I stranded
On such a strange corner and terrified of the men
Stained by light and indigence who am I
So obscured that I am off so often why so many
Doubts where is the entrance or the exit
What hustles have my extremities pulled without my being
Alerted to them who am I who am I
What surplus what lack who am I that I don’t feel the embrace, not even the embrace who am I
Living with loneliness concubine of deliria in a
Building beyond the world beyond
My body what am I doing laying out under the shooting stars
When everything in the world
Is world and insanity what crazed animals have I known and what
Abysses devour me discovered
By a black sun in my obscene thoughts who am I
With neither authority nor prestige
Without the burning attachment of a girl what did I do in
The years prior to be undeserving of such a world
Where did they maim my sword and my vast spectral rainbow
What became of my marvelous beast
That shattered the stained-glass windows with its booming voice why do my eyes
Betray my heart
What sort of filthy camel will I be and the cleanest and coarsest
Dromedary will have to see itself
double humped or confined to the consequences of the double
Illusion am I such an individualist
That I have nothing that merits the gallows for not having anything
That I detest to have nothing what can I put in the air
Who am I
With this impatient bomb in my hands with this
Mind that struts recklessly how many times
Will I swear that I’ll change that I’ll be calmer in my handling
Fire I who know
The most varied forms of being despised that I consider
men when I trap a star
Who am I that I grudgingly wander in dreams and get drunk
Each time more delusional stalking
The abrupt apparitions of the poem who did I stop being to
Be no one to not know
A peak of sanity or a twig of lemon balm I crazily
Greet the comrade leaders
who piss on the wailing wall who don’t
know the blind alleys and uphold
the multiple rigors of responsibility who am I
why is my finger shaking pointing them out
and why wouldn’t it if that’s what it was born for
who am I that I detest them
for being egoists and whores what do my eyes want shedding
tears on the pages woven with sacrifice
and still I went all in for my part what more human
version did I stop rehearsing who is going to tell me
how does one suffer out there among the cold’s knives without
a house without you without a family
or snoring spurs that fuck your groin up who am I that
I despair I place the firewood
My time and above all my body I undertook to clean
my body make it gleam
The rose among the masses and more than once the rose sang
Like a leftist rally in the Plaza San Martín
The sun, so alone, sang but what do I do in this moment without
Returning to my frills without returning
To the marvelous reality of my frills calling to what
The leaders barter with the masses
What do I do without demanding my dreams with my own
Hands or rather where are my weapons what
Can I do without practicing
My shooting and revenge who am I by definition that I
Drown that I ask myself who am I
That I let myself be devoured by the marvels of fury why don’t
I speak calmly and serenely with everyone
The exploited of my country why don’t I gather them in all
The plazas where we can share these
Wild fruits when will I find the path in what way will
I pledge myself without mortal concessions
Nor regrets for my incapacity faced with the syndicate
What prevarication have I committed why
Don’t my readings become swifter darts what
Effervescence thus lives in me
What thirst for health has me so stubbornly insomniac why
Do I demand so much without even groveling a little
Blind doves and snakes only hem me in what happened
To the blue bird bathing on my forehead
Where did the owners’ prestigious river get diverted to what
Songs will I leave to my descendants
What songs and what descendants who am I who am I
Without songs
Because there were songs that gave me such highs and
Such disastrous lows
Like the No of a girl in the Plaza Francia
The perfumed girl who am I where have I left
My arrows my imitations of the most class-consciously
Efficient worker where have they disappeared
My aptitudes that made me the most experienced with the suffering
That they caused me
The most experienced dodger of happiness what mediocrity
Has me trapped and why do my contemporaries
Avoid me what implacable truths clash in their
Dull hearts where do they hide that I only see
Phantoms still more solitary than I why don’t they return
The hope in these eyes studded with phantoms
What do I do without resolving the most dogging of my problems why
Do I leave myself dumped beneath the
Bridges of misfortune what do I do without seeking out the most
Dangerous tasks and what does the party do
Without offering me them who am I who am I without party wife
Or serenity who am I
Why don’t I humanize myself a bit and I sneak around on
Tiptoes when night is more night
And I transform myself into the tiger’s son that I am and I go on
Accommodating my claws raaxs raaxs raaxs
Like that and on tiptoes and tiptoes just like that and tastily
Accommodating my claws raaxs raaxs and pandangan
I fall on
His neck the most miserable minister my god who
Am I who am I that until today I haven’t killed a
Minister
What kind of cowardly bug am I what blue or pink girl would
Yello-ve me, one who hasn’t even killed a minister
And to kill a minister is perhaps more beautiful than killing
A rat at 4 in the morning
Or perhaps it’s not very clever a disagreeable
Operation but who am I who am I
That I haven’t dedicated myself to the massacre of the rats I who live
Protected by the difficult tree of virtue
I am the enemy of the rats but what am I doing talking about
The rats what am I doing but looking for the compañeros that
Return me my confidence and that frighten off this
Magic lightning that simmers in my head
My head many times sought out by death or rather
By suicide at noon
And on the highest seaside so they could see Her eyes who
Am I with these arguments
Who am I that my body rolls without calm though I have tired
Of tossing ceaselessly, uselessly
Who am I who am I why don’t I just leap into the battle’s
Fray, dammit?