Civil Disobedience

December 15, 2021

like no one can successfully
push away the sea waters
—it has been said in a love
poem—nadie could
make me obey what
my living make-up doesn’t
obey, it’s not a question
of ideas but of that frothy
swell that in billions of cells
splashes inside me and in
everything that lives, the only
via is this sounding refusal,
Thoreau must have explained it
as some others did too,
but we’ve just forgotten it
in violent rituals of peace,
we lost track of that stand ye
—from Shelley—like a forest
close and mute, and that always
the fallen will have an Antigone
in Thebes and Portland as well

Translation from the Spanish

Editorial note: From Americana-lcd (Valparaiso Editions, 2021). Comics by Pavel Ortega.

Luis Correa-Díaz is a member of the Academia Chilena de la Lengua (Chile) and Real Academia de Ciencias, Bellas Letras y Nobles Artes de Córdoba (Spain), poet and professor of digital humanities and human rights at the University of Georgia, and the author of several books, articles, and special dossiers, including Novissima verba: huellas digitales/cibernéticas en la poesía latinoamericana (2019). His poetry books include Americana-lcd (2021), metaverse (2021), Haikus nada más (2021), Los Haikus de Gus (2021 y 2020), Maestranza de San Eugenio (2020), Diario de un poeta recién divorciado (2000, 2005), . . . del amor hermoso (2019), impresos en 3D (2018), clickable poem@s (2016), Cosmological Me (2010, 2017), Mester de soltería (2006, 2008). He is a member of several editorial boards of European, Latin American, and US journals and has been a visiting professor at SUNY Albany, Instituto Iberoamericano – Berlín, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, University of Liverpool, Universidad de Salamanca, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Bolivia, and Universidad de Playa Ancha, Valparaiso, Chile.

Alec Schumacher is an assistant professor at Gonzaga University. His research interests include Chilean poetry, the neo-avant-garde, and translation. He has published several articles on the works of Juan Luis Martínez. He has translated works by Jorge Arbeleche, Elvira Hernández, and Luis Correa-Díaz. His translation of The Chilean Flag (2019) was nominated for the National Translation Award in Poetry 2020 by the American Literary Translators Association.