“The Pier of La Herradura” by Javier Zamora

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/58466/the-pier-of-la-herradura

Important context of the novel

“The Pier of La Herradura” is the traumatic experience of the author’s father and the factors that influenced his childhood, that consequently affected Zamora’s development and thoughts around the ongoing conflict in his country, El Salvador. Zamora builds the narrative around a dream he had, however, this is a retelling of his childhood memories with his father, as well as how he perceives what is going on around him. Like most of Zamora's poems, this one focuses on violence, armed conflict, corruption, and all those factors that made the author decide to immigrate. In this case, Zamora is seeing everything from an external perspective, where he reproduces all his experiences as if it were a movie and he is the spectator; Clearly, his father is the center of attention in this poem, but he still knows that everything he has seen has affected his growing up process and shaped the person he is today.

Close analysis of the structure of the poem

Zamora opens the poem up with a dream that’s been haunting him, stating that “when I sleep I see a child hidden between the legs of a scarred man” (Zamora), the boy and the man are Zamora and his father respectively, representing the consequences of growing up in war zone surrounded by death and destruction. The age difference also represents the endless cycle of conflict, just as the child hides behind his father, surely the father did the same with his grandfather; He refers to his father as a scarred man, which is a metaphor for the emotional wounds that this experience has left on him, and how this pain stole his childhood and scar him in unimaginable ways. This part of the poem makes me think of my personal experience, it is inevitable not to visualize my father when referring to this man; my father was also deeply scarred by Colombian corruption, violence, and injustice, even more than my mother and me, since he grew up in the suburbs of the capital, where resources are limited and media attention doesn’t reach to report the catastrophes that the government causes in those areas. It is inevitable for me to think of myself as well and how those experiences of my parents also changed my way of thinking and acting, leading us to where we are today: 3000 miles away from Colombia.

He continues to describe how “uniformed men surround them.” and how he mistakes “bullet casings for cormorant beaks”. This comparison enhances the innocence of the child and how he’s so naive to understand the severity of his surroundings because his father is putting a blindfold on his eyes, protecting him from the horrors of war. The author expands this idea by mentioning again the birds, as he says: “There’s a village where men train cormorants to fish: rope-end tied to sterns, another to necks, so their beaks won’t swallow the fish they catch.”. Zamora uses this metaphor to describe how people in El Salvador are taught and controlled to follow the regime without asking anything, how they’re manipulated to act in the way the government wants, taking away their freedom so that they don’t even dare to question anything or act against them. Even though the reader already knows who the man is, at the end of the novel the author clearly makes the connection with his personal experience, affirming that: “My father is one of those birds. He’s the scarred man”. His father is also the dominant bird that cannot fly away and escape from the village, the child is also stuck, guarded by his scarred father but unable to flee because of the violence that surrounds them. This exemplifies how the fighting in El Salvador has confined and traumatized Zamora's father for the rest of his life and how his childhood was stolen by the conflict.

Literary devices

Zamora uses other literary devices to enhance his point, he employs imagery and specific diction that stirs up a nice, almost beautiful image in the reader's mind, which contrasts dramatically with the real scene he's meant to convey. He illustrates: “till water churns the color of sunsets”. He portrays the water mixing with blood till it turns the color of a sunset, but in such a way that the reader doesn’t really perceive the violent connotation of this action since he is lured by the beautiful image the author is portraying. The contrast between beauty and violence creates an intriguing dynamic that influences the reader's perception of Zamora's words.

Closing opinion on the poem

This is a reality that unfortunately many children have to go through during their lives and not all of them are as fortunate as Zamora or I were to be able to emigrate to another country with better opportunities. This is one of the best poems I have had the opportunity to read because it perfectly exemplifies the sad and disgusting reality of many third-world countries, where children grow up surrounded by violence and it is the only thing they get to know. It is beautiful how we can turn something so sad into a beautiful and admiring work, and how from tragedy can come wonderful things from which we can always learn.