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The Snake
3 months ago
By Martin Espada
At the Save America rallies, after the damnation of the criminal aliens breaking across our borders and 1,900 percent more murders, he would ask the crowds if he could read a poem. This has to do with immigration, he’d say. The crowds would whoop and yip. He’d read “The Snake,” words stolen from a song, from the hand of a dead Black singer who could not snatch it back, a jazz fable spun on vinyl, a tale from the fabulist of Greece centuries before Christ.
The crowds would listen to the poem: Bikers for Trump, Cops for Trump, Uncle Sam in his beard, the Statue of Liberty in her crown, the millionaire who sells pillows on TV. They would testify in T-shirts that said Jesus is my savior, Trump is my president. They would hoist the Stars and Bars or signs that rhymed: Trump 24 or before. They would see the movie of the poem in their heads:
The snake frozen on the road, the woman scooping him up tight to nurse him with milk and honey by the fire, the incandescence of his skin brought back to life, the woman’s kiss and the viper’s venomous bite, her question why, then the words oozing from his tongue: You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in. The crowds would howl at the moral, at the punch line, at the tender woman who would die of tenderness. Like a preacher spelling out the lesson of a parable, their president would repeat: Immigration.
As they slept—the bikers and the cops, Uncle Sam and the Statue of Liberty, the millionaire on his magic pillow—adolescents from Guatemala scalded the killing floors at the slaughterhouse in Grand Island, Nebraska, their hoses like snakes spewing rivers that bubbled in the steam. Around them, the blades of skull splitters and bone saws waited for their fingers to slip, fangs lurking in the murk of early morning, in the daze behind the goggles on the faces of adolescents from Guatemala, sleeping the next day at Walnut Middle School, shaken awake by teachers who spotted the acid burns on their hands.
The fable that Martin Espada refers to here comes from Aesop, and is called The Farmer and the Snake.
The song that Espada mentions was written by Al Wilson, and taken from an album called Tells it like it is! from 1963 by the brilliant Oscar Brown Jr. Everything he does is great, and I'd strongly suggest seeking it out. My personal favorite album from him is Between Heaven and Hell.
At the Save America rallies, after the damnation of the criminal aliens breaking across our borders and 1,900 percent more murders, he would ask the crowds if he could read a poem. This has to do with immigration, he’d say. The crowds would whoop and yip. He’d read “The Snake,” words stolen from a song, from the hand of a dead Black singer who could not snatch it back, a jazz fable spun on vinyl, a tale from the fabulist of Greece centuries before Christ.
The crowds would listen to the poem: Bikers for Trump, Cops for Trump, Uncle Sam in his beard, the Statue of Liberty in her crown, the millionaire who sells pillows on TV. They would testify in T-shirts that said Jesus is my savior, Trump is my president. They would hoist the Stars and Bars or signs that rhymed: Trump 24 or before. They would see the movie of the poem in their heads:
The snake frozen on the road, the woman scooping him up tight to nurse him with milk and honey by the fire, the incandescence of his skin brought back to life, the woman’s kiss and the viper’s venomous bite, her question why, then the words oozing from his tongue: You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in. The crowds would howl at the moral, at the punch line, at the tender woman who would die of tenderness. Like a preacher spelling out the lesson of a parable, their president would repeat: Immigration.
As they slept—the bikers and the cops, Uncle Sam and the Statue of Liberty, the millionaire on his magic pillow—adolescents from Guatemala scalded the killing floors at the slaughterhouse in Grand Island, Nebraska, their hoses like snakes spewing rivers that bubbled in the steam. Around them, the blades of skull splitters and bone saws waited for their fingers to slip, fangs lurking in the murk of early morning, in the daze behind the goggles on the faces of adolescents from Guatemala, sleeping the next day at Walnut Middle School, shaken awake by teachers who spotted the acid burns on their hands.
The fable that Martin Espada refers to here comes from Aesop, and is called The Farmer and the Snake.
The song that Espada mentions was written by Al Wilson, and taken from an album called Tells it like it is! from 1963 by the brilliant Oscar Brown Jr. Everything he does is great, and I'd strongly suggest seeking it out. My personal favorite album from him is Between Heaven and Hell.
who are too complacent and incurious to entertain the thought
that people end up on the wrong end of a morality play,
or the wrong side of history, based on their actions,
not their in-group privilege.
And the original fable is kind of broken, to begin with:
the most charitable interpretation is that
one shouldn't ignore the warning signs
that someone is taking advantage of your kindness,
but the snake there is a talking fairy tale snake,
and the exact reason snakes bite outside of hunting
is in defense, when they have no way of telling
someone large and scary like a human isn't going to harm them.
And there are plenty of professional snake handlers
who avoid getting bitten for decades
just by studying and respecting
the animal behavior.
Oh, and the snake in the fable didn't form the often abused and underpaid
backbone of the farmer's economy.
But the song is fantastic! Here's the version that I've found.
And VERY good points, as always.
And that version is indeed truly epic.
I'm pretty proud of many of them, especially the ones where I pull together research from different places.
Looking back, I'm pretty surprised by how ahead of the curve many of them seem to be. But really, they're just of their time.
but also more diluted in terms of focus and merit,
and more rife with poisonous disinformation.
In an environment like this, bringing back a speech by MLK or X,
a quote from Hunter S. Thompson or Walter Lippmann,
a passage from Harper Lee or a tune from Joan Baez
can be an important firefly to bring people back
to the discussion of what's important,
especially when it's juxtaposed
with a level-headed review
of today's news headlines.