William Burroughs: The Writer as Prophet

Words by William Burroughs and a few of my thoughts on them.

In 1983, my novel Colombian Gold was published in English by Clarkson N. Potter. My editor, Carol Southern, solicited from William Burroughs a blurb for my book. Burroughs was one of my culture heroes, and his Yage Letters one of my favorite books.

Burroughs responded to my editor's request with the following words:

"What is happening? The West will have to defend their preposterous living standard against the Third World: by sheer force; by torture and extermination; by systematic terror; by silencing any voice of dissent. Suppose that a potentially industrialized country like Brazil should go Communist? Where would the U.S.A. be? Right where we deserve to be. We have struck out. We have failed. All we stand for is naked force.

"Latin American governments on the way to becoming democracies? What an utter, transparent travesty and farce. Democracies where people are dragged out of bed and tortured and shot. The government is investigating... Yes, and they will still be investigating ten, twenty years from now, if the flimsy structure holds together that long.

"Does Reagan know about all this? The torture and terror? Of course he does. He isn't a moron. Everybody knows... To quote Dr. Alexander King: 'I regard the next thirty or forty years as a period of great transition in human affairs. In Mexico, fifty percent of the population is under 15. This constantly escalating population will mean a huge increase in the work force, in countries already suffering from unemployment and underdevelopment. Can we envisage a world in which presently developed countries - U.S.A., Europe, the Soviet Union, Australia and New Zealand - are living in a ghetto of middle-aged people, relatively rich, protected by sophisticated weapons against hordes of people outside: young, hungry, unemployed? Such a situation couldn't persist for very long.'

"Well, Reagan and Co. don't care. They don't have much time left in any case."

Carol Southern wrote back to Burroughs thanking him for his statement but saying that we were hoping for a pithier blurb. William Burroughs obliged her with the traditional kind of blurb that publishers plaster on the back cover of their books. But almost thirty years later, his statement still continues to fascinate, and haunt, me for its prophetic accuracy about the world in which we live nowadays. I want to share it now with anyone whose eyes land on this page.

Susan Sontag: Vassar College Commencement Address

Despise violence. Despise national vanity and self-love. Protect the territory of conscience.

Try to imagine at least once a day that you are not an American. Go even further: try to imagine at least once a day that you belong to the vast, the overwhelming majority of people on this planet who don't have passports, don't live in dwellings equipped with both refrigerators and telephones, who have never even once flown in a plane.

Be extremely skeptical of all claims made by your government. Remember, it may not be the best thing for America or for the world for the President of the United States to be the president of the planet. Be just as skeptical of other governments, too.

It's hard not to be afraid. Be less afraid.

It's good to laugh a lot, as long as it doesn't mean you're trying to kill your feelings.

Don't allow yourself to be patronized, condescended to - which, if you are a woman, happens, and will continue to happen, all the time.

Do stuff. Be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration's shove or society's kiss on your forehead.... Pay attention. It's all about paying attention. It's all about taking in as much of what's out there as you can, and not letting the excuses and the dreariness of some of the obligations you'll soon be incurring narrow your lives. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager.

You'll notice that I haven't talked about love. Or about happiness. I've talked about becoming - or remaining - the person who can be happy, a lot of the time, without thinking that being happy is what it's all about. It's not. It's about becoming the largest, the most inclusive, most responsive person you can be.

5

And suddenly
as unannounced
as a summer shower
a strange man appeared
barefoot
smiling
singing
giving
away his verses to the people
In the newspapers
of the capital
his photo
along with a commentary
full of praise
said
he was one
of the greatest of the great
poets of his country
and the public authorities
who knew him
since he was a boy
gave orders to drag him
to prison
sixteen times
in four months
to teach him
the rich
are deeply disturbed
by the topic of art
regarding which
a lawyer type
from a poor family
but an aristocrat in spirit
announced the sad news
that art was important
in a manner
unattainable by the mighty
but as is so often the case
ignorance
lost the battle
against intelligence
Today
when this poet's work
is admired by many
his tormentors make haste
to greet him as a friend.
But he has not forgotten.

Poem by Raúl Gómez Jattin

Translated by Jaime Manrique and Dean Kostos
Published in BOMB Magazine

4

To go back to the village
and find the streets
unchanged.
The same elderly people.
The same beautiful faces
of boys and girls.
The same river
coursing round and round.
My heart
is heavy and somber.
My parents are dead
the family house
in ruins
flattened by a cyclone
of death and solitude.
All I have left is poetry
and the young men
who ask me about it
and read me.
What wouldn't I give
for my parents
to know I am loved
for what I write.

Poem by Raúl Gómez Jattin

Translated by Jaime Manrique and Dean Kostos
Published In BOMB Magazine

3

His old friends are bitter
that despite the ups
and downs of life
he has never abandoned
the adventure of being
a poet who writes.
They find it peculiar
he doesn’t live in wards
or hasn’t died in jails
and they miss him.
They're all winners
in prestige and gold.
What is it about poetry
that incites a kind of avarice.
The doctors and sad
businessmen bite the deaf anger
of feeling anonymous
blind to themselves
and to the uncharted world
of spirit.
I take pleasure in knowing
they envy me.

Poem by Raúl Gómez Jattin

Translated by Jaime Manrique and Dean Kostos
Published In BOMB Magazine

2

In the mental wards
the worse ones are the nuns
more violent
than hypodermic needles
than fever and madness
the nun is a quiet gorgon.
In the mental wards
when I cry the nun laughs.
I could say the nun
is neither evil nor good
she simply hates
all that moves
all that lives
all that has a heartbeat
all that is
not her dead God.

Poem by Raúl Gómez Jattin

Translated by Jaime Manrique and Dean Kostos
Published in BOMB Magazine

1

Oh God
you who do not exist
are so fortunate
not to care
for the whole human race.
Instead I
die every day
anguished, mad
destroyed by others
With the beggar
I die
with the distraught lover
I suffer
with the whore trapped
in a cantina
I weep
then go back to being
alone
gnawing the rock-hard bread of exile
among so many people
I sometimes
love.

Poem by Raúl Gómez Jattin

Translated by Jaime Manrique and Dean Kostos
Published in BOMB Magazine