When I think on the course I have run,
From my childhood itself to this day,
I tremble, and fain would I shun,
The remembrance its terrors array.
I marvel at struggles endured,
With a destiny frightful as mine,
At the strength for such efforts:—assured
Tho’ I am, ‘tis in vain to repine.
I have known this sad life thirty years,
And to me, thirty years it has been
Of suff’ring, of sorrow and tears,
Ev’ry day of its bondage I’ve seen.
But ‘tis nothing the past—or the pains,
Hitherto I have struggled to bear,
When I think, oh, my God! on the chains,
That I know I’m yet destined to wear.
Oh rose, rose of mine! that once sprang sprightly up,
why do you bend double, flaccid, weak and sad,
your petals withered, your once-green calyx pale?
Do you tell the earth the sweetness of your past,
like the long secret story of dead hopes
a dying virgin whispers to her priest?
Thinking on what was, and to see how you decline,
I’d wish to raise the stalk on which you languish,
to give fresh strength to you; beauty, color;
to return, with a sigh, your perfumed breath
to bring you to my lips and in a long, long kiss
press upon you new, most softly, heat and fire.
Her delicate way
came from a blue planet
from indigo tinting
shadows or space… Dawn
open to crystal… Her own
way of taking
the first light’s secret
triumphed… And a thousand
formulas of moon and shadow,
of turquoise and of spring.
Now I know
that distance is three-dimensional.
It’s not true that the space between you and me
can be measured in metres and inches,
as if the streets might cross each other freely,
as if it were easy to hold out your hand.
This is a solid, robust distance,
and the absence is total,
complete;
in spite of the illusory possibility
of the telephone
it is thick, and long, and wide.
Although beyond the eternal snows, aspires
The vast-winged eagle still to loftier air,
That nearer to the sun in blue more clear
He may renew his eyeball’s splendid ires.
He rises. Sparks in torrents he inspires.
Still up, in proud, calm flight, he glories where
The storm breeds lightnings in its inmost lair;
Whereat his wings are smit by their fierce fires.
With scream, in waterspout borne whirlingly,
Shriveled, sublimely tasting flame’s last kiss,
He plunges to the fulgurant abyss.
Happy he who, for Fame or Liberty,
In strength’s full pride and dream’s enrapturing bliss
Dies such undaunted, dazzling death as this.
I take apart a rose and I don’t find you.
To the wind, thus, columns of floating petals,
the palace of the rose in ruins.
Now—impossible rose—you begin:
by needles of interwoven air
to the sea of the intact delight,
where all the roses of the world
—before they were a rose—
are beautiful without the prison of beauty.
We present this work in honor of the 55th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Emilia Bernal Cuban 1884 – 1964
A man of iron!
Iron the flesh of his invincible chest.
Iron his biceps and triceps, his arm raised in triumphant sign.
His hands of iron and his belly.
And his thighs potent columns of iron, and his calves,
brave pedestals sustaining that formidible Titan,
with his foot nailed to the earth, with clawed fingers he seizes
the roots of the tree from the Biblical Adam.
Iron his eyes.
Iron his teeth.
Iron his brain, his lungs and heart,
his kidneys, spleen, and sex.
Inside and out a man completely made of iron.
Strength!
The greatest strength that time has launched
is his incarnation.
I have a white rose to tend
In July as in January;
I give it to the true friend
Who offers his frank hand to me.
And for the cruel one whose blows
Break the heart by which I live,
Thistle nor thorn do I give:
For him, too, I have a white rose.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 205th birthday.
José Jacinto Milanés Cuban 1814 – 1863
I can but pity him, the one
Who lingers in dull Slumber’s thralls,
While on his roof, unnoticed, fall
The effulgence of the rising sun.
Is there a purer, rarer treat
Than to leap off the wrinkled bed,
And, in the country, lightly tread
Of dewy grass the carpet neat?
I say the country, for I ween
Sweet Morning loses half her smile
Without there be soft winds the while,
And much of blue, and much of green.
These are not had in town, where gray,
And cold and damp, the misty gloom,
As in a suffocating tomb,
Shuts out the morning smile of day.
And then, those rows of houses tall,
With their grim faces, rigid, even,
Weary the soul: the light of heaven
By fragments seems on them to fall.
No! I must stray with footsteps free,
In some delightful rustic place
Without a blur the virgin face
Of life-restoring Morn to see.
To see her in her robe of light,
Far in the crimson Orient shine, —
Like a pure maid, whose smile divine
Elates the soul with chaste delight.
Oh! is there one so poor of thought,
And with a heart so dead and cold,
Who can at the break of day behold
Sweet Nature’s charms, and love her not?
See her with life and beauty new
Roll with the ever murm’ring river;
With the lithe branches dance and quiver;
Sparkle in the resplendent dew.
Low in the reptile on the ground;
Erect and nimble in the brute;
Delicious in the hanging fruit;
Smiling in all the flowers around!
Ah me! I do remember well
When but a simple, beardless boy,
How oft, and with what eager joy,
Came I upon such scenes to dwell!
Now would a butterfly’s light wings
Entrance me with their gaudy hues;
Then would I set myself to muse
Upon a rose, — and dream such things!
And always gay! ‘Twas natural:
Care had not yet impress’d its furrow
Upon my brow, nor had of sorrow
Tasted my lips the bitter gall!
Those days of boyhood vanish’d soon;
Anon, I felt Love’s burning sting;
And then I deemed a foolish thing
To doat on hill, and sun, and moon.
Ungrateful that I was! But how
Severely, Nature, did I pay
For my neglect! She who for aye
Had vowed to love, — forgot her vow!
Most bitterly I wept, and yearned
For her dear presence; and my strength
I fear’d me would have failed… At length
Peace to my shatter’d heart returned.
Oh! what an anguish most sublime
‘Tis to forget! But ah! at last
The iron chain that bound me fast
Fell ‘neath the steady strokes of Time.
Time! Who with hand unseen and noiseless
Pours on our raven locks his snow;
Quenches the light in eyes that glow,
And Beauty’s lips makes pale and voiceless!
And now, once more, I love to stroll
And view sweet Nature at this hour;
For, then, her freshness has the pow’r
To soothe the fever of my soul.
But still I feel deep in my breast
The old wounds bleeding, and I sigh
Whene’er I happen to pass by,
Hand clasp’ed in hand, two lovers blest.
And even sometimes, if I hear
The tender whisp’rings, fraught with meaning,
Of two palms to each other leaning,
I feel a loneliness most dreer!…
If, on a bough, I see, alone,
Two birds exchange delightful lays;
If two stars blend their am’rous rays;
If two waves rolling into one;
If two clouds in the heavens glide,
And on their way their shadows mingle;
If two paths, meeting, form a single;
If two hills standing side by side;
I linger; and with gloomy mood
Remember that I’m loved by none;
That while so many a mated one
There be, I weep in solitude!
As long as the sky whirls
You will be my redemption and my doom,
magnetic vision,
lily in underwear,
salvation and madness
every night waiting.
As long as the sky whirls
no infernal could be a stranger
because I have to take care that that would not harm you,
No joy would go by inadvertent
Because in some way I have to reveal it to you,
As long as
the sky
whirls
you will be the truth of myself,
the song and the venom,
the danger and the ecstasies,
the vigil and the sleep,
the dread and the miracle.
As long as the sky whirls … but perhaps the sky whirls?
Well: as long as the sky exists.
As long as
the sky
exists
you will be my pain most noticeable,
my loneliness most tragic
my bewilderment unanimous
my perpetuous silence
and my absolute consolation.
As long as the sky exists … but perhaps the sky exists?
Well: as long as you yourself exist.
As long as
you yourself
exist
you will be the mirror and the time,
the infinity and the imminent,
the memory and the unusual
the defeat and the verse,
my enemy and my image.
Because there would be no more suns than the ones you yourself radiate
like there would be no other penance than to know that you exist.
But perhaps you do exist?
Poets Corner 