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Don't lie. This admonition booms in our ears form early childhood. A liar, a teller of lies, is to be shunned, evicted from job or home, sometimes even imprisoned. Yet, the most astonishing liar I have ever met was a honest man, truthful even about the fact that he wore no pants on the day he faced the firing squad.
Nelson Azócar is a friend of mine. We worked together as tenant lawyers for Su Clínica Legal, the legal services program for the Latino community in Chelsea, Massachusetts. Nelson came from Chile, a man who would sometimes erupt in song when he saw me—Martín, que toca violin!—but whose face was rounded with quiet dignity, a gravity which suggested he knew the burden of an extraordinary and devastating experience.
On September 11, 1973, a savage military coup overthrew the elected government of President Salvador Allende in Chile. A military junta assumed power, headed by General Augusto Pinochet. This was pure state terror: executions, imprisonment, and disappearances for all those stained red by leftist ideas. Over the years, in snatches of conversation, I heard Nelson tell the story of his escape from Chile. I learned that I had been working with a man who once talked his way out of being shot by a firing squad. I asked him how anyone could be so persuasive under such terrific pressure. "You have to be a good liar," he grinned.
I began to compose a poem in 1991. The first draft of the poem told Nelson's story in simple linear fashion. Actually, Nelson had not one, but three encounters with military authority. The first incident involved interrogation by a military tribunal. The second occurred when Nelson tried to leave the country and a suspicious officer confronted him with a gun. The third took place when soldiers removed him from his mother's house for an appointment with the firing squad. Each time, the good liar outwitted his executioners.
In fact, I called the poem, "The Good Liar Meets His Executioners," in honor of Nelson's uncommon gift. The poem ended: "he tells what he knows three times / what the lie is / who the liars." The word "liar," of course, was used subversively, to tunnel through the usual associations. If Nelson told justifiable, "good" lies-to save his own life in a dangerous situation-the Pinochet and Chile's junta told enormous lies, which justified a cascade of murder and repression in the name of fighting communism.
Yet, I was not satisfied with the poem. This was bland stew, missing some mysterious spice. I revised the poem many times, to no avail. When I published a book in 1993, I omitted this poem. I put Nelson's tale in my desk and forgot about it.
The following year, I began reviewing Pablo Neruda in preparation for teaching a course on his poetry. Neruda died twelve days after the military takeover; his funeral was the first public demonstration in Chile against the coup. I took out Nelson's poem. Since Nelson's experience was, in effect, a metaphor for liberation through intelligence and determination, the poem needed a metaphor for liberation to recur in every stanza. Moreover, Nelson's escape was a secular miracle. The poem needed that sense of the miraculous, the fantastic, reminiscent of certain of Neruda's poems.
The sea, Neruda's muse at Isla Negra, provided the metaphor for liberation. The sea also lends itself to images of the miraculous. In the second stanza, when Nelson devised "a plan to leave Chile by sea," I added: "Somewhere the waves / rumbled a prayer for him / like a chorus of monks." After the escape plan failed, in the fourth stanza, now came this: "Somewhere the sea turtles / lumbered from the surf / and waited all night for him." After he talked his way out of being executed, at the end of the sixth stanza, these lines now occurred: "Somewhere the ocean boiled for him, / as if here a giant octopus had wrapped itself around a warship full of admirals." Finally, characterizing his escape, in the last stanza, I added that Nelson "smuggled himself away from Chile / the green waves lifting him."
Them came another new motif: I repeated the phrases "good liar" and "executioners" in each of the first six stanzas, but only repeated the phrase "good liar" in the seventh and final stanza. The idea was to convey the churning cycle of oppression and resistance. If oppression returns again and again, so too does resistance, in a constant loop of human history. Here, resistance-"the good liar"-is even more resilient than oppression-"the executioners"-and so has the last word in the poem.
There remained one more step: reading the poem to Nelson. I gave a reading at the Chelsea public library, where I showed him the poem, gave him a copy, then asked his permission to read it aloud. I told the audience that I was grateful to him, because the subject of the poem is, in a way, the co-author of the poem.
That night, I received a call from Nelson. He politely asked if he was really the co-author, as I said that afternoon. Of course, I responded. Nelson then told me that I should make two changes. "First," he said, "you have sea turtles in the poem. In Chile, on the Pacific Coast, we have sea lions. They should be sea lions. Second," he went on, "when the soldiers take me away to shoot me, you have me dressed in my bathrobe. I know you're trying to protect my dignity, but the truth is that they took me away in my underwear. It's important to say that."
He was right. I made the changes, and included the poem in my next book, published in 1996. The poem took five years to finish, an act of endurance, surely, but nothing compared to the endurance of Nelson Azócar in the escape from his executioners.
The Good Liar Meets His Executioners
for Nelson Azócar, Valparaíso, Chile
The first time
the good liar
met his executioners
was at the military tribunal
after the coup.
Before the row of officers
withered stiff as scarecrows,
he grew more polite and forgetful
with each name tolled
on the list: "No, senor. No, senor."
On the wall, the portrait of General Pinochet,
mustache and sunglasses, glowering.
The good liar returned home that day,
but singers of red songs
reddened the waters of Chile
face down in the current,
and the executioners kept vigil
over blazing pyramids of books,
so a passport was forged
with a plan to leave Chile by sea.
Somewhere the waves
rumbled a prayer for him
like a chorus of monks.
The second time
the good liar
met his executioners
was at the dock,
hunched in a peacoat
with a sack on his shoulder.
A pistol dug into his neck,
chamber clicked
like a bored sergeant
cracking his knuckles.
A guard disbelieved the passport
stamped Merchant Marine,
the list of names quivering
in his other hand.
"My name is not on that list,"
the good liar said,
and since his executioner
could not read
without trailing a finger slowly
across the page
the pistol relaxed, leaving
the imprint of the barrel,
and only the passport was burned.
Somewhere the sea lions
lumbered from the surf
and waited all night for him.
The third time
the good liar
met his executioners
was at the house of his mother.
Now his name was on the list,
troops rifle-jabbing him
still in his underwear
to the pickup truck,
family on the sidewalk
begging to give him
at least the dignity of his pants,
neighbors listening with bowed heads.
On the way to the firing squad,
a balding hill where every skull
recalled the bullet's cloud of ink
flooding the brain,
the good liar invented fables
of a colonel he knew,
barbeques in the backyard
and dating his daughter,
boasting to the other
condemned companeros
loud enough
for curious executioners to believe.
The truck circled back
and left him at the jail instead,
thirty men in a room
jostling for a peephole to breathe
or a rubber pot rocking with piss.
Somewhere the ocean boiled for him,
as if here a giant octopus had wrapped itself
around a warship full of admirals.
After bail, the good liar
smuggled himself away from Chile,
the green waved lifting him.
You have to be a good liar, he says.
in the sanctuary of steaming coffee
he tells what he knows three times,
what the lie is,
who the liars.
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