A Prose of Love for Her<\/p>\n
Havana, February 2015.
\nBy Jes\u00fas Santrich.<\/p>\n
*<\/p>\n
I found you to the south of the day
\nAs coming out of the anguish
\nOf the hurricanes;
\nyou were between palms and
\nTaino gulls
\nGlowing in the coordinates of a sun;
\nAt that moment
\nthe sunset undressed before my eyes
\nand the sea welcomed me
\nwith the abysmal embrace
\nof its deep salty blue
\nin which the moon submerges
\nits ardent glow
\nand the whispering breeze
\namong shipwrecked spells.<\/p>\n
To calm the cyclone, snatched
\nfrom my desire to have you,
\nyou gave me a piece of your dawn,
\nthe keys of Eleggu\u00e1,
\nthe elekes of Obbatal\u00e1,
\nthe osh\u00e9 of Shang\u00f3,
\nthe bells of Osh\u00fan,
\nthe omieros of the pantheon,
\nin a polymita the rainbow,
\nthe waters of the Almendares
\nand the sacred necklace of Yemay\u00e1.<\/p>\n
With a wisp of your Siboney twilight
\nyou have my deepest secrets of love,
\nand my last vision of the Castle and the Giraldilla;
\nthen you put the strength of your cemies
\nin my soul
\nand the iridescent guan\u00edn de Hatuey
\nYou hang on my chest …;
\nYou gave me the amulet of Mayvona,
\nthe patience of Anayana,
\nthe Cross of Calatrava,
\nthe murmur of your waves
\nand a song by Juan Formell
\nto fill the saddlebags
\nwith my hopes.<\/p>\n
The truth,
\nit was enough for me “a white rose
\nin June as in January”
\nbut you gave me more,
\nmuch more,
\nin the unspeakable tranquility
\nfrom your sky,
\nin your sweetly mulatto flavored flavor,
\nin your damp presence
\ngone from the hands of Atabey,
\nand from the pristine tears
\nof Boinayel
\nso that you would receive the sowing
\nof Olofin.<\/p>\n
So,
\nyou made me live the anthology
\nof your hours
\nbouncing between dreams
\nfrom which I do not wake nor want…
\neven less when I hear
\nthe moan and the song,
\nthe happiness and the crying
\nof your waves in El M\u00e9gano,
\nand the rumor of the time that
\nspreads walking and resuming
\nthe ancient cobbles
\nand the ancient walls
\nof your aged architecture
\nfull of nostalgia,
\nmade up of memories
\nand furtive desires
\nof legendary lovers.<\/p>\n
How I love you my Havana,
\nbecause you succeed in filling my loneliness
\nof the port without sailboats
\nwith that hoarse joy
\nthat only the corals have,
\nand anoint it you know this patina of glory
\nof the Moncada,
\nthe inks of the Escambray,
\nor the Sierra Maestra,
\nwhen in its summit of glory
\nthe butterflies pose,
\nand your music hands, in short,
\ncaress my dock nostalgia
\nmy nostalgia for anchor and sad networks;
\nmy nostalgia of night bolero
\nin your accomplice aged seawall.<\/p>\n
How I love you, my Havana;
\nI love you so much
\nthat I give myself to your orishas
\nto keep me guarded
\nin the depths
\nof your bohemian nights;
\nIndigena Havana,
\nBlack Havana,
\nMulatto Havana,
\nsacred land of Havaguanex.<\/p>\n
And I love you in the melancholy airs
\nof a baroque concert,
\nin the smoke of your cigars,
\nin the setback of a son
\nof Manolito Simonet,
\nbecause … “I’m obsessed with you”
\nand the world is witness to my frenzy …, ”
\nthat’s why my heart thunders
\nlike a “Trebuchet once more”
\nor like the cannon shot at nine o’clock,
\nand my soul dances and runs
\nlike everyone who is
\n“Crazy about my Havana”,
\ncrazy about his salsa,
\ncrazy about his son,
\nand the touch of the g\u00fciro,
\nand the parrand\u00f3n,
\nand the deepest danz\u00f3n,
\nand the notes of Chan Chan
\nplayed by Compay Segundo,
\nor the voice of Laritza Bacallao
\nintoning with C\u00e1ndido Fabr\u00e9
\nmelodies that embellish the world.<\/p>\n
How I adore you my Havana
\nbecause you are my dream,
\nand I do not wake up nor want to,
\nexcept when listening to
\nthe “Black Rhapsody” of Lecuona,
\nthe “Cuban Dances” of Cervantes,
\nthe “Zapateo por Derecho”,
\nand the fulgent chords
\nof Frank Fern\u00e1ndez
\ninterpreting the candor,
\nthe passion and the fervor,
\nof the loving embrace
\nof Manuelita and the Libertador
\nthat Master Angulo
\nvirtuously sculpted,
\neternalizing in the rock its splendor.<\/p>\n
How I love you my Havana,
\nbecause in the dramaturgy of Estorino
\nI was convinced that “Penalties can swim”;
\nand of the bucolic tenths
\nof Indio Ortatom\u00e9
\nthe faith of observing without being able to see
\n“seeing, as one
\ndreaming in a sad night,
\nlandscape that no longer exists
\nwith eyes that no longer see\u201d
\nbut that keep the light of the soul
\nwith which I found the blue unicorn
\nthat took me to the arms of Yolanda
\nsinging a Trova of Silvio Rodr\u00edguez
\nwho told me,
\nthat “wings are not necessary to make a dream “,
\nthat” enough with your hands
\nenough with the chest is enough with the legs and with the commitment\u201d<\/p>\n
It was like this that I learned singing
\nand confirmed fighting,
\nthat \u201cYou do not need wings
\nto be more beautiful
\nenough good sense immense love …;
\nyou do not need wings
\nto take the flight\u201d
\nand then I picked it up,
\nand I bewitched myself,
\nand I was charmed with your spells,
\nand I flew like a hummingbird
\nwhile the “Abracadabra”,
\nof your legend
\nplaced before me astonished
\n“Apostle” by Juan Sicre,
\nto the Grajales de Teodoro Ramos …,
\nand in a certain way”
\na film by Tom\u00e1s Guti\u00e9rrez
\nin which the tenderness
\nof Sara G\u00f3mez
\nshone, only matched
\nby the flash of Korda
\nthat eternalized leaves
\nthe clean look of Che.<\/p>\n
How I love you my Havana,
\nbecause from your hand
\nhas seen the reviving of Gisellee
\nin an impossible arabesque,
\nin a great attitude …,
\nbetween the twists and turns,
\na fouett\u00e9 and the entrechatde
\nthe dance of Alicia
\nque jumping, jumping,
\nor resting on her tips
\nplayed by God .. .<\/p>\n
How I love you,
\nmy brunette, Habana del songo,
\nof the myths and the corsairs,
\nof the saints and the paleros,
\nof the songs and the mysteries
\nthat sings to Oloddumare
\nwith the same fidelity
\nand to La Virgen de la Caridad,
\neither from its guanajatabey seed,
\nor from its genuine maker,
\nor from the deepest
\nof Yoruba goodness.<\/p>\n
It was with the verb of “Songoro Cosongo”
\nand the charm of your drums
\nthat I traveled to the sources of the Oddan
\nto search for the Abaku\u00e1 roots,
\nto get drunk with the songs of Ef\u00ed,
\nto learn about the stories of Ef\u00f3,
\nto listen to the hides
\nand the African voices
\nthat talked
\nabout the secrets of the fish Tanze
\ntrapped in the memory of Nasak\u00f3,
\nand in each mulatto accent
\nof that Camagueyan of
\nthe four anguishes,
\nFrom somewhere in the spring,”
\nhe taught me how to have
\nit that I had to have.<\/p>\n
I got entangled too
\nin the power of your
\nporters
\ntrying to cage your sun in my hands,
\nand I listened in the distant silence of
\na dark dawn,
\nthe overwhelming sadness of Moctezuma
\nin a deep concert
\nof the genius of Vivaldi,
\nwhen the albasus cried
\ntheir tears of roc\u00edo
\nthat caressed the face
\nof a red-eyed jungle of Apapa Efik:
\nI saw jungle in his eyes
\nand found in his deep gaze
\nthe mysteries
\nof mother Sikanekue,
\nand I found the leopard Tanze
\non the tam of the Ekue
\nque sounds with the spirit of Sikan,
\nwith the blood of the rooster,
\nwith the skin of the goat,
\nwith the magic of Calabar …,
\nwaving in the wind
\na miraculous phrase from the memory
\nthat also spoke with timbre of conga
\ny of timbales, saying “abas\u00ed ser\u00ed Ekue maya beki\u2026”;<\/p>\n
Yes, as the persistent echo of the past
\nrevealing that “in the voice of the drum God speaks to us”,
\ndiscovering the mystery of dance, of origin … and of ritual.
\nThen I continued
\non the path of the Zohar
\nand among the dust of the hours,
\nI saw a legion of brothers
\nmarching next to Cespedes,
\nMaceo, M\u00e1ximo G\u00f3mez and Mariana;
\nand I was no longer your Spanish owner
\nwho with your own hand you had,
\nand I understood without hesitation
\nthat, although men can fail
\n“Words do not fall into emptiness”
\nBut Santiago …<\/p>\n
Santiago, it came to my mind
\nlike a long street turned into Aqueronte,
\nwhere Panch\u00f3n walked
\nin his mission of Charon,
\nenjoying the happiness of the sunflowers
\nwhile through the mourning I felt that the lights
\nof the darkness of my soul were extinguished;
\nbut no,
\nno,
\nsimply not,
\nbecause the sound of the sun
\nwas again blowing,
\nfrom the east to the west,
\nfrom Guant\u00e1namo to Pinar,
\nin the polyrhythm of the bat\u00e1
\nwhich announced the “Feast of Fire”.<\/p>\n
I have traveled with you
\nto the kingdom of Nsambia,
\nto the power of the 16 Mpungos,
\nto the very same root
\nsof the Manikongo kingdom
\nas to the magical world,
\nto the wonderful world
\nof the verb of Carpentier,
\nwith which I took the car of time
\ntowards the century of lights,
\nfollowing the route
\nof your lanterns of ghostly lights;
\nthe same ones that gave birth in the past to
\nthe avatars of Esteban and Sof\u00eda,
\ncaught up in the Jacobin impetus
\nof V\u00edctor Hugues \u2026,
\nonly to know
\nthat “words are not enough
\nto create better worlds”,
\nand that there is “no more promised land
\nthan that which man
\ncan find in himself\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
Or ask Mackandal then,
\nask Boukman,
\nand drink with them
\nthe blood of the boar,
\nevoking the Houngan,
\nso that the night of August will glow
\n“The night of fire”
\nthe night of freedom,
\nand finally bloom
\nan emancipated world,
\nas in the Moro mambo,
\nas in the essential colors
\nof the “History of the Caribbean”,
\nas in the snails and the flowers
\nthat explode from the “Interiors of the Hill”,
\nfrom the “Festines”
\nand the “Dream” of Portocarrero.<\/p>\n
How I love you, my Havana,
\nbecause in you the past and the present are drawn,
\nbecause in you my entire Cuba is reflected:
\nbecause you are in the hurry of Marti
\nin his thunder of lightning, in his starlight,
\nin his myth of iodine
\npoured into the sand
\nthat kisses the sea;
\nor because you are in the cowbells of the moru\u00e1
\nwhen they sound in Dos R\u00edos,
\nannouncing the luto
\npor El Ap\u00f3stol that rides towards eternity.<\/p>\n
How I love you Havana,
\nbecause you are the microcosm
\nof real impossible stories;
\nbecause in you I found the way
\nto travel to the seed
\ndoing the trade of darkness
\nthat made me discover the secrets
\nof the kingdom of this world,
\nscourged by the wars of time
\nin which all history was forged;
\nbecause in you I was intimated the scenario
\nin which the Ekue dreams hidden in the famb\u00e1
\nevery second
\nof the consecration of spring
\nflooding
\nwith exuberant anti-Cuban hallucinations
\nthat had the Ta\u00edno magic of “the real
\nmarvelous”
\nthat allowed me to grasp the profuse metaphors
\nof your perennial colonial pages
\nin which the Marquis of Chaplaincies
\n“Lay on his deathbed,
\nthe chest armored with medals,
\nescorted by four candles with long beards of melted wax\u201d
\nthat marked the path
\nof the fantastic Amerindianidad
\nthrough which Melchor walked,
\nmarking firm paths from which Sotomayor
\njumped trying to reach
\nthe flight of Arnaldo Tamayo the bird,
\nwho knew how to find the key to play with the stars
\nand bring up the heavens
\nthe sacred symbols “of the long green lizard,
\nwith eyes of stone and water. ”<\/p>\n
How I love you my Havana,
\nbecause of you I received the hand of Orunla
\nwith the power of the babalawos
\nwho gave me the spells
\nto walk among the hurricanes of memory
\nwand cross the domains of Yemay\u00e1,
\nand retrace the footprints of Handel and Scarlatti
\nentangled in the notes of Stravinski and Louis
\nArmstrong,
\nfeeling the evidences
\nof the transience of life,
\nthe reversed march of time,
\nthe brevity of the instant
\nthat usually extends in a blade of sol
\nagainst your breasts
\nwhen the tocororo flies,
\nwhen the real palm dies,
\nwhen the amber cane is born
\nand the children sing La Bayamesa,
\nwith the same love
\nthat Hemingway
\nput in the boat of the old man
\nwho challenged your seas
\nto catch the immense fish of his upright obstinacy…,
\nuntil reaching
\nthe port of his vanquished age
\nto resume life to continue dreaming
\nlying on a beach,
\nwatching \u201ca moon as bright as that
\nlike the one that infiltrates the sweetness of the cane\u201d,
\nshouting alive to Fidel” who vibrates on the mountain
\n\u201ccaring for the ruby, the five stripes and the star.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have undertaken my last battle; the battle of dignity. I want you to know that I am a complete, integral revolutionary, I will not retreat a single step regarding the goals that we have set. Abril 11\/18 \u00a0 A Prose of Love for Her Havana, February 2015. By Jes\u00fas Santrich. * I found you … Continue reading “English Translation of Jesus Santrich’s poem “Una Prosa de Amor Para Ella””<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[91,94,92],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-colombia","category-poetry","category-translation"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8e7kf-1Ay","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6110"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6631,"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6110\/revisions\/6631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}