The drowned in the Gulf
They never docked at the port
they remained in the retentive of the waters
arrhythmic, emphatic and undone
dreaming of the pier, freedom and the boat
while they fell with inflated bronchi
in the feast of the fishes;
they never docked at the port
slowly sank into the dullest
helpless in a filthy silence
with bloody eyes of memories
feeling the double digestion
Of hope and shipwreck.
Distance II
In the midst of pussies and reeds there is a vat of fables,
an aging nomenclature
and an abandoned ephemeris skeleton.
Today logic prefers the roundness of a Valium
and I will sit down to sing
on a cushion of fronds
the theme of my entelequia:
I have grown like an obelisk by force of boiling,
they dressed me in anniversaries and blushes
and a conditional monomania: boredom.
my saliva number
beats with summer transcendence
and optimal will,
my rotten oars
by a plethoric and flammable mineral
They took me away from a deposit of fimo.
Where am I going now with this erect voice
treading shadowed remains
of sonorous throats?
Litany against oblivion
What happened is missing
Gabriel Bocangel
Don’t forget the banished
Of his silent promises nor of the sunsets,
don’t forget the daring crew
that traversed the chronic silence of sunset;
don’t forget the dead
who were rowing under the boats
his inconsolable penance;
don’t forget the nymphs
who gently kissed lovers
and whispered to them perpetual wisdom
on the burning beach;
don’t forget the terrifying moment
when the native soil sank in the waters
and the secret voice of the soul fell silent;
that he will not forget the weight of blood
nor of the incorporeal ashes of goodbye…
horizon strata
For Angel Cuadra
No one could see the banished
opening the indispensable gaze
to the instinctive fugitive night
when the sea was a human face
and contained the sanguine wait
where amorphous dreams were mixed
infinitesimal threads of tenderness
splinters of decisive solitudes
that swirled and flowed
through the hidden crevices where freedom
exchanges his memorable insomnia.
…of succession
To my daughter Aisné
someone must go inside
so that hope is not broken
that surrounds existence;
someone like the inscrutable minerals
is bound to be unpublished
and traverse life with taciturn steps
bearing all the deafness
so that the applause does not stun you;
someone must go inside
like the blood that feeds us
with its innocent mystery;
someone who does not die, everlasting
that injects dreams into the shadows
so that one and the other are transmitted
affection.
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Editor’s Note: The author, born in Havana in 1951, was expelled from the University of Havana for “ideological diversionism” and left Cuba in 1980 through the port of Mariel. He lives in Miami, after many years in New York, where he taught.
This anthology can be read and downloaded for free on the Betania editorial blog.
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