The Poor
By Roberto Sosa
(Translated from Spanish by Spencer Reece)
 
The poor are many
and so—
impossible to forget.
 
No doubt,
as day breaks,
they see the buildings
where they wish
they could live with their children.
 
They
can steady the coffin
of a constellation on their shoulders.
They can wreck
the air like furious birds,
blocking out the sun.
 
But not knowing these gifts,
they enter and exit through mirrors of blood,
walking and dying slowly.
 
And so,
one cannot forget them.
 

 
Roberto Sosa is one of the best-known poets of central America. Born in Yoro, Honduras in 1930, he spent many years working in low-paying jobs to support his family. He went on to publish a number of books of poetry, including Los Pobres, The Poor, in 1968.
 
Commentator Dave Bonta has written of Honduras: “poets are held in very high esteem in that country… Hondurans of all classes have tended to view poets as uncorruptible truth-tellers — a valuable and perilous profession in a country where political corruption is so deeply engrained.”
 
Roberto Sosa is one of these truth-tellers. He has said, “literature doesn’t provoke revolutions… but it does assist in social reconstruction, both immediate and far-reaching. It’s an aesthetic reflection of the way things are, to the extent that it captures the critical elements of a society: corruption, for example, betrayal, treason, impunity, injustice.”
 
This social awareness is very much in evidence in “Los Pobres,” one of Sosa’s best-known poems.
 
The first part of the poem seems to look at the poor from the outside: “The poor are many,” the poem begins, “and so--/impossible to forget.” “No doubt, / as day breaks, / they see the buildings / where they wish / they could live with their children.” It is an outsider’s perspective on the poor, imagining that they must wake up wishing they could live in nicer homes, wanting what others have.
 
With the third stanza, there is a shift in diction. From matter-of-fact phrases, we move into striking, poetic language: “They / can steady the coffin / of a constellation on their shoulders. / They can wreck / the air like furious birds, / blocking out the sun.” The poor are strong—strong enough to be pallbearers for a star. They know how to deal with death. When they come together in anger, like a flock of “furious birds,” they are powerful, capable of “wreck[ing] the air” and “blocking out the sun.”
 
But the poor are unaware of their power: “not knowing these gifts, / they enter and exit through mirrors of blood, / walking and dying slowly.” The poor do not know their potential—the strength and force inherent in them, and so they “enter and exit,” “walking and dying slowly.” The poem ends as it began: “And so, / one cannot forget them.” At the end, that phrase has new layers of meaning. Now it is not just a statement about how numerous the poor are: it is almost a warning. Knowing the potential of the poor to endure and to enact change, “one cannot forget them.”
 
Translator and poet Spencer Reece has said, “in its sparse language, it captures the pain of that overlooked country. Stripped of baroque excess, the poem hangs on the page like a crucifix.” While Sosa’s poem is not explicitly religious, it does resonate with the Catholic Church’s teaching about the poor. One of the first things Pope Francis said after his election was, “I want a Church which is poor and for the poor.” He has consistently reminded us of the Church’s “preferential option” for the poor. He writes: “God’s heart has a special place for the poor, so much so that he himself became poor…. This divine preference has consequences for the faith life of all Christians….  We need to let ourselves be evangelized by [the poor]…. We are called to find Christ in them, to lend our voice to their causes, but also to be their friends, to listen to them, to speak for them and to embrace the mysterious wisdom which God wishes to share with us through them.”
 
Accompanying and learning from the poor in this way leads to solidarity—and real solidarity has real consequences. To quote Pope Francis again, Solidarity is “something more than a few sporadic acts of generosity.…. solidarity must be lived as the decision to restore to the poor what belongs to them.” For Christian believers, the poor are “impossible to forget.”