Rita Dove’s books include American Smooth, On the Bus with Rosa Parks , Mother Love , Selected Poems, Grace Notes , Thomas and Beulah (which won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry), Museum , and The Yellow House on the Corner. She was Poet Laureate of the United States between 1993 and 1994; this past year, she was elected a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets.

The poem below, “Parsley”, is based on a bizarre incident that occurred during the border scuffle between Haiti and the Dominican Republic in the 1930s. The Dominican dictator, Rafael Trujillo, (1930-1961) decided to determine the nationality of the workers on his sugarcane plantation by having everyone pronounce the Spanish word for “parsley”, “perejil.” Knowing the Creole speaking Haitians would not be able to roll the “r” in “perejil,” Trujillo had them all killed.

Parsley

1. The Cane Fields

There is a parrot imitating spring

in the palace, its feathers parsley green.

Out of the swamp the cane appears

to haunt us, and we cut it down. El General

searches for a word; he is all the world

there is. Like a parrot imitating spring,

we lie down screaming as rain punches through

and we come up green. We cannot speak an R-

out of the swamp, the cane appears

and then the mountain we call in whispers Katalina.

The children gnaw their teeth to arrowheads.

There is a parrot imitating spring.

El General has found his word: perejil.

Who says it, lives. He laughs, teeth shining

out of the swamp. The cane appears

in our dreams, lashed by wind and streaming.

And we lie down. For every drop of blood

there is a parrot imitating spring.

Out of the swamp the cane appears.

2. The Palace

The word the general's chosen is parsley.

It is fall, when thoughts turn

to love and death; the general thinks

of his mother, how she died in the fall

and he planted her walking cane at the grave

and it flowered, each spring stolidly forming

four-star blossoms. The general

pulls on his boots, he stomps to

her room in the palace, the one without

curtains, the one with a parrot

in a brass ring. As he paces he wonders

Who can I kill today. And for a moment

the little knot of screams

is still. The parrot, who has traveled

all the way from Australia in an ivory

cage, is, coy as a widow, practising

spring. Ever since the morning

his mother collapsed in the kitchen

while baking skull-shaped candies

for the Day of the Dead, the general

has hated sweets. He orders pastries

brought up for the bird; they arrive

dusted with sugar on a bed of lace.

The knot in his throat starts to twitch;

he sees his boots the first day in battle

splashed with mud and urine

as a soldier falls at his feet amazed-

how stupid he looked!-at the sound

of artillery. I never thought it would sing

the soldier said, and died. Now

the general sees the fields of sugar

cane, lashed by rain and streaming.

He sees his mother's smile, the teeth

gnawed to arrowheads. He hears

the Haitians sing without R's

as they swing the great machetes:

Katalina, they sing, Katalina,

mi madle, mi amol en muelte. God knows

his mother was no stupid woman; she

could roll an R like a queen. Even

a parrot can roll an R! In the bare room

the bright feathers arch in a parody

of greenery, as the last pale crumbs

disappear under the blackened tongue. Someone

calls out his name in a voice

so like his mother's, a startled tear

splashes the tip of his right boot.

My mother, my love in death.

The general remembers the tiny green sprigs

men of his village wore in their capes

to honor the birth of a son. He will

order many, this time, to be killed

for a single, beautiful word.