Even Beneath This Bitterness by Otto Rene Castillo At the bottom of the night the footsteps descend and retreat. Shadows surround them. Streets, drunks. Buildings. Someone running away from himself. A broken bottle, bleeding. A widowed paper sailing around a corner. A freethinker pissing on the grass, where tomorrow the well-dressed children will play beneath the dew. Far away something screams, dark metal, genital. Asphalt and blind stones, sleeping air, darkness, cold, police, cold, more police. Streets, whores, drunks, buildings. Police again, soldiers, again police. The statistics say: for every 80,000 officers of the law there is one doctor in Guatemala. Then understand the misery of my country, and my pain and everyone's pain. If when I say: Bread! they say shut up! and when I say: Liberty! they say Die! But I don't shut up and I don't die. I live and fight, maddening those who rule my country. For if I live I fight, and if I fight I contribute to the dawn. And so victory is born even in the bitterest hours.