Legna Rodriguez Iglesias ,The Man Who Looked After Suicidal Penguins on the Abandoned Beaches of the World (Cuba)

The Man Who Looked After Suicidal Penguins on the Abandoned Beaches of the World

Melancholy and alone, with a penguin
that’s melancholy and alone on a beach
that’s melancholy and alone. Not rotten.
Not tired. Not ugly. Not mean.

Melancholy, yes. On a trail
of Sargasso weed and death and nets.
The happy bottle. This never fails.
The bottle, the night and a penguin.

Melancholy and alone. A sea of feathers.
Where are your friends, your family?
Drink a little, smile, cry, smoke.

Don’t stroke penguins. That’s Zoophilia.
Don’t confuse sand with surf.
Be grateful. Remember. Reconcile.

Heberto Padilla, Anne Frank (Cuba)

In front of Cologne Cathedral
—divided by two black columns—
once more the children
are taking up their songs.

I have watched them playing:
mostly, I have noticed,
they jump from one song to the next,
from one tune
to another.

And today I was given the photo
of your thin fading face,
child, now arrived in your high Hebrew heaven.
And how odd
that I am now sitting on this bench
(a few steps from the Rhine)
watching the water go by,
for I had long thought
that blood would have flowed . . .

Nancy Morejón, Analysis of Melancholy (Cuba)

Hours passing
                         like a breeze.
Shadows of a living world,
passing like a breeze,
they bring me to speak with you.

Stepping into a river. Skipping
over puddles. Jumping
over a wall. Reading
the day’s news. Discovering
rain. Walking under the leaves
of the silk-cotton tree. Singing
in the afternoon.

                           Beating
with its erotic pulse: quiet and pure melancholy.

SS

Rafael Pérez Estrada, Chronicle of the Rain

One of her nipples was red, tepid, carnal; the other, blue, looked
made for death’s caress. They also brought to mind the luxuri-
ous faucets of a porcelain tub.

There’s a story of a woman who was devoured by the moon. It’s
said that her cries were made of silver.

Never write the words “tiger” and “dove” in the same line, for
the first may devour the second.

I was fascinated by the cloud the farmer kept anchored to the 
door of his shack: “It’s very docile," he explained, “and we milk
it three times a week. That’s all the land needs.”

I knew that he had assassinated the sea, for his hands were
stained blue.

“That swan is a rapist!” the frightened girl shouted at me, point-
ing at the erect neck of a ferocious swan. And I, who through
some strange interference shared her dreams, proposed at that 
instant that we exchange nightmares.

The girls came running: “The sea, the sea!” they shouted.
“There’s a wave made of gold!”

I asked her to, I asked her like a child asking for the impossible: she
took off her shoes and clothes and walked all night long on the sea.

It was a forest of infinite trees, and each tree had a swing, and
in each swing was a dead child waiting to be resurrected.

A boy whose eyes were darkening asked me, “When I die, will
the sea cease to exist?” I chose not to disillusion him.