LA HABANA
Even granite slumps over time
As water collects in green pools
Whose shadows remain in green rings
Over echoes of a once glorious past
In the National Cemetery
Where the beard will lie
As a final testament
Of his complicity in the past
Of his separation from the land’s people
Who can no longer lie
But must lie in the dirt of the farms
Where they will always remain
And where marble is just a rock in the earth
Which does not slump under the weight
Of a long-lived reign.
Granma, they keep you in a glass house
Instead of the ocean
Which is your purpose
Where surely you long
For distant shores and smoky pistols
For funny jokes and failures
For women with flowers
For men with desperate passions
For life with loss and possibilities
For roller skates
For in a glass house Granma,
where you can see out
But you cannot leave
And Granma you dream of floating
And glass breaks easily.
50 years later, we walked with Ramone
Through the Plaza de la Revolucion
With its phallus
Where the bearded man would speak for hours
And you have to say he was a genius,
On our way to watch the great American past-time
The Pelota, where the Industriales won
But we could not sit with the people.
Despite Ramone’s heroic efforts.
Berta you did not come in a dream,
Because you knew that dreams have
More power in sunlight.
You wagged your finger,
And you were either scolding me,
For bringing your God-daughter.
Or thanking me.
Or both.
How could it not be both?
You approached me through Ramone,
And you hid behind the fig tree
To say how you felt.
Madre when you kissed my face,
I was lost in the softness of your cheeks,
And the warmth of your spirit.
I knew that,
once again,
Habana had put us,
Where we were supposed to be.
Ramone, you fought for Batista
But you knew we wouldn’t tell
You wanted your lilies to bloom
Where they could grow
And perhaps someday they will.
One the plane ride home
We held our cheeks
Together and cried
Our tears mixed
While we desperately searched
For the right words
Like they were our own lost children
And we have not found them still,
But perhaps someday we will.