The Mother of Mexican Poetry

I was born in a shack in Sonora.
I was born in a bungalow in Tel Aviv.
I was born in a country house in the Yorkshire Dales.
The details are not recorded,
Because the details are the Devil's secret.

My mother died screaming in child-birth.
My mother turned to prostitution and crack cocaine.
My mother rode with the hunt and the hound.
The details are ill-defined,
Because the details are the Devil's province.

My father raised a hard-eyed child.
My father disappeared in 1968.
My father blew his brains out one Christmas Eve.
The details are transitory,
Because the details are the Devil’s joke.

And three times I was martyred:
In the garden at Gethsemane,
On the streets of Alexandria,
In the cold of Salem meeting-house;
For I am the mother of Mexican poetry,
The daughter of an institutional revolution,
The sister of the unnamed dead.

For Roberto Bolaño