Poems by Erick
Erick Brenstrum,graduaded in physics at Victoria University and he has worked many years as a meteorologist in Wellington and Christchurch.In 1978 travelling for South America and learning Spanish.In 1981 published "Thalassa".From this his first poems book. he wrote::
Small Poem Santiago
If dreams had legs at 3 a.m.
there would be a foot down the throat
of every dog on the street
The City
As I passed the railway station
under the tall green trees
and the always smiling sun
past the little ice cream cart
the crowd was watching
men in simple clothes
files into a van
there five soldiers with guns
as one locked the door
another took note of the time.
Erick Last year went to Chile and wrote one of his last poems:
SANTIAGO 22 YEARS ON
Now there is music in the streets
fllutes and drums in calle Ahumada
mimes and stand-up comics
in the Plaza de Armas
where they are playing chess under the trees
and dancing the cueca
in from of the cathedral.
The police still travel in pairs
but its mixes doubles now
without machine guns
and the fear of torture and munder
no longer marks
the faces of the crowd.
In the Parque Forestal
the men still lie down on the benches
with their heads in women’ laps,
except on Sundays
when it is the other way round.
In Mapuche station,
where Neruda brought a shipload
of refugees fron Spain,
the rails and engines are gone
replaced by a floor of polished stone
under the vast dome of glass and steel
with an art gallery and bookshops at the sides
and the signal house turned into a theatre.
Outside,the bakery is the same
with its many bins of various bread
but the prision where I saw
men with guns and watches
is a hole in the grouind
with a motorway at the bottom,.
Cars have more than doubled
and so has pollution.
In Parque O’Higgins
the mayor has a silver machine
for washing the air.
Before they sprayed water
from low flying aircraft
but it evaporated
before reaching the ground.
The exhibits in the museum
build from the past towards the present
from pre-columbian pottery
through clonian furniture
to the last display
one wing and the broken glass
of half of Allende’s spectacles.
You wonder who souvenired the other half.
Pinochet has returned from England
trailing clouds of tattered immunity.
The United State may extradite him
for the murder of Orlando Letelier
and Ronnie Moffit
or they may not.
Clearly,they have nursed their rage
for decades,
but it may yet evaporate
before it reaches the ground.
Still they digging up bones
with a bulldozer
in Concepción.
Three weeks ago the new President
opened the Moneda for the first time
since airforce rockets
punched through the walls
like giand fists.
I joind the sream of families and tourists
passing under arches and through courtyards
between lines of shiny uncomfortable police.
By its presence,on it’s many feet,
thecrowd is cleansing the palace
of its deaths,
and as I walk down Huerfanos
into Miraflores,crossing Merced,
heading towards La Chascona,
in the sun and in the shade,
in the light on the river,
in the leaves and in the language,
Neruda is present,
now and foreve-ahora,
y siempre!
Erick April 2000