Saturday, February 18, 2023

We Are All Chileans Now, a poem (In Memoriam: Pablo Neruda) Indran Amirthanayagam

 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


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