Dreams are Political
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Far, far away, in the middle of the blue sea that churns as if there were a little well-oiled machine below it, way off in the distance, rises up an ordinary city.
I am on the other side, on top of some wooden beams that were once a dock. I'm standing next to my parents. Behind my parents, many black people study this ordinary city. Their faces rest on their chin. The dark-skinned people are so contemplative their gaze seems stupefied. I also look on attentively.
There is another dock to the left. And, upon the tyrannical sea, the remains of a bar. The black men and women dance arrhythmically, out of synch with a tune by Benny Moré. Those of us on the other side look more and more astonished. All of a sudden, the sea grows rougher. The ocean bar drifts far away, then draws near. It falls and rises. I fall and rise. All the beams teeter. We blacks are one shapeless mass. My mother falls and rises. My father falls and rises. I fling out my arms to grab hold of them so they won't sink. Oh, love. Mama wears a long-suffering face and a far-away look. She doesn't complain but I sense she is really suffering. My father is the only stoic. The sea is no longer the sea; it's mud. Anchors, aquatic plants surface. The blacks are the workers. The workers are seaweed. What does it matter? We are one big whirlpool. One immense whirlpool.
Nancy Morejón—poet, literary critic, and translator—is author of a number of volumes of poems, including Richard trajo se flauta, Cuarderno de Granada, and Elogio de la danza. Her critical essays are Lengua de P‡jaro, Recopilaci—n de textos sobre Nicol‡s Guill n, and Naci—n y mestizaje en Nicol‡s Guill n. Morejón, who majored in French as an undergraduate student, is the first black Cuban to graduate from the University of Havana in Cuba.
Pamela Carmell is co-translator of With Eyes and Soul, a selection of poems by Nancy Morejón that was published by White Pine Press in 2004. She has also translated texts by a number of other writers, including Luisa Valenzuela, Manuel Puig, Ena Luc'a Portela, Soledad Puertotas, Gloria Fuertes, and Carmen Boullosa. Carmell's translation of Antonio Lerreta's novel, The Last Portrait of the Duchess of Alba, was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection, and her translation of poems by Belkis Cuza Mal, Woman on the Front Lines, was awarded the Witter Bynner Prize.
