After the Fall: Poems Old and New

Ode to Fidel Castro

Ode to Fidel Castro I O Boy God, Muse of Poets Come sit on my shoulder while I write Cuddle up and fill my poem with love And even while I fly on billows of inspiration Don’t forget to tickle me now and then For I am going to write on World Issues Which demands laughter where we most believe. Also, My Cute One, don’t let me take a heroic pose And act as though I know it all Guard me from Poet’s Head that dread disease Where the words ring like gongs and meaning goes out the window Remind me of the human size of truth Whenever I spout a big, ripe absolute (Oh why did you let the architects of our capital city Design it for giants So that a man just has to take a short walk and look about For exhaustion to set in immediately) Please, Sweet Seeker, don’t discourage me from contradicting myself But make everything sound like life, like people we like And most of all give me strength not to lay aside this poem Like so many others in the pile by my typewriter But to write the whole thing from beginning to end O Perfection, the way it wants to go. II My subject, Dear Muse, is Fidel Castro Rebellissimo and darling of the Spanish-American lower classes 73 A general who adopted for his uniform The work clothes of the buck private and the beard of the saints A man fit for ruling a great nation But who only has an island. Irene, the beautiful Cuban, has his picture over her bed Between Rudolph Valentino and the Blessed Virgin He stands large and flabby between the perfect body and the purest soul Doves on his shoulders, on his open hands And one dove for crown standing on his head He is not afraid of birdshit, his face is radiant. Someday Hollywood will make a movie biography of his life Starring the spreading Marlon Brando They’ll invent a great love on his way up, a blonde with a large crucifix Whom he loses along with his idealism, and once at the top A great passion, a dark whore with large breasts, to drag him down. In real life his romance is with his people and his role Otherwise his sex life is normal for his age and position. Fidel, Fidel, Fidel . . . I am in love with the spotlight myself And would like the crowds to chant my name Which has the same letters as yours but rearranged Where is my island Where my people What am I doing on this continent Where is my crown Where did everyone go that used to call me king And light up like votive candles when I smiled? (I have given them all up for you sweet youth my muse Be truly mine.) Am I like Goethe who kept faith in Napoleon Long after the rest of the world had given him up For tyrant and betrayer of the revolution? If Napoleon was like Tolstoy writing a novel Organizing a vast army of plots and themes 74 Then Castro is like a poet writing an ode (Alas that poets should be rulers Revise that line, cut that stanza, lop off that phrase) Paredón! Paredón! What he did was kick out the bad men and good riddance Batista What he is doing . . . Well, what he is trying to do is . . . (Muse, why don’t you help me with this Are you scared of socialist experiment?) One thing he is doing is upsetting a lot of people Our papers are full of stories that make him out a devil And you a fool if you like him But they are against me too even if they don’t know I exist So let’s shake, Fidel (The hand that exists shakes the hand that doesn’t) My Fidel Castro, Star of Cuba. III The Hotel Teresa in Harlem is a dumpy landmark in a slum But when Fidel Castro went there to stay And when Nikita Khrushchev went up and hugged and kissed him for being Mr. Wonderful Right out in public (they get away with it, those foreigners) Then Harlem became the capital of the world And the true home of the united nations. That whole bunch sitting around the hotel like in bivouac roasting chickens And...