Three Poems

Those Who Go

They are going.
With no other recourse now, they are going
toward the night.
     Desperate,
A boat will come for them,
with no answer. Above,
the stars, with nothing to say.
And below our coastal patrol,
with its monotonous step,
will not end the nightmare.
For hours we have been looking at them face to face
through the iron grille of a make-believe garden.
It rains ink from the heavens.
They are going. They are going.
Something is about to be born.
They are going. They are going.
With larvae, with rats, with sea foam.
They are going. They are going.
Something is about to die.

NEXUS

Destinations . . .
was the first word
and already he didn't want to continue
with the rest:
Travel and travelers are two things I loathe—
and yet here I am,
about to tell the story of my expeditions.

That was how the manuscript began
Claude Lévi-Strauss
would later turn into
the vast introduction to Tristes Tropiques.
Sad tropics in stories about the poor world,
silent tropics, drunk with sun or fog.
. . . and yet here I am,
about to tell the story of my expeditions.

He stopped reading that first page
and rested his eyes
on an abandoned skiff at the pier.
There was a pale light,
as if he were not in Havana;
like the light of a tunnel
fleeing toward the Baltic Sea,
to meet soft, white Nordic snows;
like a black light
that would try to come out
almost any other dawn.
He walked along the Alameda de Paula.
He almost touches the dark masts of the harbor.
An enormous line of ships wishes him good morning.
His wandering soul had landed there, inadvertently,
next to the scows
and the little skiff
and a great drunken ship called NEXUS,
all balancing themselves on the water under the steady rain.

He walked along the Alameda de Paula.
It was a gray September.
A rice-like water
ran between the paving stones,
and he made out, in the distance,
the blue cap of that stevedore,
son of Tito and Brígida,
conceived on the turbines of Ciego de Avila,
Felipe Morejón Noyola,
agile sailor and proud black man
of undecipherable lineage,
carrying empty sacks
as he walked along the Alameda de Paula;
tying up ropes wet by the sea,
and more ropes wet by the sea,
along the Alameda;
oh, sad tropics;
whistling lost in thought in front of
a certain ship called NEXUS,
anchored in the memory
of the few passersby he could see.

But what matters now
are not the dreams of that stevedore
of the sad tropics;
what matters
is not the headless wandering phantom
who tries to take refuge in the doorway of the union hall;
what matters
aren't the thick eyebrows of Aracelio Iglesias,
king of the cargo hold and friend of the dawn,
walking along the Alameda;
what matters, oh sad tropics,
is not his colorless hat,
but rather his raised hands,
once more clamoring in a mute cry,
oh sad tropics.
over the oil stains,
which the waterline of the NEXUS
stretches between the waters.

Manjuarí

A little fish called a manjuarí comes into my dream.
Its sad eyes seem to want to ask me a question.
It swings its tail in front of my eyes, which are also sad.
What will become of us, manjuarí,
you who have come into my sleep
after crossing centuries and centuries,
centuries of centuries, amen,
and managing to endure,
avoiding arrows, traps,
and nets?
My eyes and yours asking
the reason for this encounter
and this moment which is better
though less brilliant than your scales
and your dreamlike, restless, eternal tail.
What does it matter how long this moment lasts
if the time of dreams
has propelled you toward me,
phosphorescent against the bitter cyclone
the exterminating angel brought
in the midst of the muffled bells of a shipwreck?
A polyhedron gathers us up in its light.
The two of...