Dear colleague friends,
I send you greetings from a people
on the other side of the Atlantic,
between two continents.
A people who finally lifted themselves out of the ashes
of hundreds of years of humiliation.
A people who carry a hope and a dream
that they themselves may create their future.
I greet you from Nicaragua,
I greet you from Nicaragua.
Dear poet friends who write
of the welfare state's problems,
of excessiveness as a burden,
of boredom and life's emptiness.
Here I see poets who stretch out hands
in hope of a sheet of paper and a pen,
who write songs of life on thick walls
where the bullet holes are still warm.
Poems of love and happiness,
and a future for Nicaragua.
Dear writer friends,
who shout about freedom and democracy,
I greet you from Wall Street,
where the war gives money to the stock exchange.
I greet you from Brooklyn where freedom
is to die in a gutter.
I greet you from Miami where democracy
is that everyone carries weapons.
I greet you from Nicaragua,
I greet you from Nicaragua.
Internationalists, I see that you exist
and I see what you do.
I see how much you sacrifice,
I see the responsibility you feel.
I see that you look at the world as one
and that everything that happens is connected.
I see you as my sisters and brothers,
I see you like the air I breathe.
You are the future light,
you are all we have.
And you are the future of life,
and you are the children of history.
So I am greeting from Nicaragua,
I greet you from Nicaragua,