Apolitical Intellectuals

A poem by Rene Otto Castillo*, read at the Edward Said Memorial in Johannesburg.

One day the apolitical intellectuals of my country will be interrogated by the simplest of our people.

They will be asked what they did when their nation died out slowly, like a sweet fire small and alone.

No one will ask them about their dress, their long siestas after lunch, no one will want to know about their sterile combats with “the idea of the nothing” no one will care about their higher financial learning.

They won’t be questioned on Greek mythology, or regarding their self- disgust when someone within them begins to die the coward’s death.

KHANYA: A journal for activists No: 4 November 2003 Apolitical Intellectuals

They’ll be asked nothing about their absurd justifications, born in the shadow of the total life.

On that day the simple men will come.

Those who had no place in the books and poems of the apolitical intellectuals, but daily delivered their bread and milk, their tortillas and eggs, those who drove their cars, who cared for their dogs and gardens and worked for them, and they’ll ask:

”What did you do when the poor suffered, when tenderness and life burned out of them?”

Apolitical intellectuals of my sweet country, you will not be able to A vulture of silence will eat your gut.

Your own misery will pick at your soul.

And you will be mute in shame.

*Rene Otto Castillo is a Guatemalan revolutionary who was killed in the 1960’s.