We Are All Chileans Today
The poet did not pass only from a broken
heart, not because he could not eat as
his prostate cancer spread, not after
he read of Salvador Allende bombed
in the Moneda, not walking out alive.
The poet died because of
clostridium botulinum injected into
his stomach while he slept in Santa Maria
clinic, Santiago, alone inexplicably while
his wife and driver packed bags at Isla Negra
for the family's flight to exile in Mexico.
He was killed in a hospital by a third party
according to forensic scientists examining
the remains. The third party cannot silence
the poet. The third party cannot say love
is short and forgetting long.The third party
will not be allowed to have the last word
in the history of Chile, of democracy.
Indran Amirthanayagam, c) February 18, 2023