Search Order, and: Manifesto for the General Customs Office of the Republic, and: Open Gift

A note on these poems: "Search Order" was published in the Mexican magazine Letras Libres, in the May 2003 issue, with the following commentary: "Blanca Reyes, the wife of the poet, journalist and peaceful dissident Raúl Rivero, was able to rescue this poem after the political police of Cuba took him prisoner and confiscated all his books and papers. Rivero was condemned to twenty years in prison this past April." Rivero has told me that "Manifesto for the General Customs Office of the Republic" was the last poem he composed in Cuba, before departing into exile. I discovered "Open Gift" in the magazine Crítica (Puebla, Mexico), December 2001.