Because my tongue is black
the man from Wall Street
wants to whitewash my words
or subtitle what I say.
Because in the great avenues,
full of luminous signs,
the pain does not look good,
no one is sick,
nobody dies,
there are no hospitals
in the middle of the boulevard.

Because my tongue is black
the man from Wall Street has translated my being into his world.
But he don’t know what means by what I want to say.
Because there is no bitterness in the chocolate factory.
He can’t understand that I don’t want to exchange his car for my heart.

Because my tongue is black
the man from Wall Street
nationalize my words,
get the juice that my voice gives
and makes exotic perfume to sell it to buyers of countries.

Because happiness is a product.
As my tongue is black
my cry of anguish is not official
And the man from Wall Street thinks that watering my shoebox
is enough not to leave his city of stars.

But the man from Wall Street
has never left home
and does not know how to speak in the house of God.

Montse Lopez Muley Abdhalha
(MUSSIA)

Translator’s note: original poem written in Catalan. Translated with the sole purpose of conveying its general meaning.

Wall Street, the stock market. Buy. Sell. Far from that, I knew little about the subject at hand. The lyrics of the song suggest a world where money manipulates and oppresses or, at least, tries to guide your will towards its interests. Turning to the representation of this idea, I could not get out of my mind the cover of the album “Nevermind” by Nirvana. A baby submerged in a pool where there is a dollar bill stuck on a hook. In my opinion, for its message, Nirvana’s cover is the best album cover ever made. I couldn’t think of any other idea without finally finishing on Nirvana’s cover over and over again.

      I was at a dead end and decided to consult my friend Pere Puig (www.intradiacoach.com), an expert in the stock market. I asked him how he could relate the stock market world to the meaning of the poem. At certain times, certain ways of stock trading, negatively affect people’s lives for the benefit of speculators. They are deliberate movements, avoidable and, with no doubt, exempt from innocence. I discovered that sometimes stock market trading is no good for humanity. In Catalan and Spanish language, exists the  word “valor” (meaning human values) and also synonymous for “shares” (meaning company shares). I had the idea to convert “humanity” in a stock market trading share. And make “Humanity Inc” shares go down when the “SP500” rises up. The SP500 is a real stock market asset representing the 500 companies mostly capitalized in the world. Pere Puig liked the result. Are there alternatives to capitalism, Pere? “Search in the  bloodiest science fiction books, Jordi”, he replied.

                                                                                                         Jordi Roca Zanuy