Translations by Ken Whidburn, Melbourne Australia

Skylark

On the back of a skylark
Coal-black fragment of coral,
One evening I rose up
When it took flight.
A little spray
Of rosemary flowers
I took with me,
So that I would feel better.
And I left in a flake of darkness
Like a horseman in the gale,
With the perfume of night
On my iridescent pitch-black steed.
Beautiful, dusky skylark,
Canvas of the universe,
Amusement, window,
Inverse phantom,
Hymn of a divine devil.

The Dance

The ballroom awaits us
With a triumphal look
To premiere and applaud
The dance of the blood.
The stars are there,
the press and the glaciers,
happy to share in
the health of the blood.
Watching over us, whispering to us,
There is a choir of icicles,
Circling us, surrounding us
To immobilize us.
I’m not going, you’re not going
To the game of disguise,
You are a chorister and the love of this harlequin
–
Romantic – and till the very end –,
unpostmodernizeable.
The court awaits us
To spill the blood,
But we are not going
To such a hateful dance.

Expedicion

We are traveling through the storm,
After the explosion of God.
Each lightning-flash shows us
Phantasmagorias of love.
At each step the mud gets deeper,
A reptile leaps out; ten lie in wait.
Each second is like the payment
For what we have become.
On board for this expedition
Are a madman, a bricklayer,
A magician, a nightingale,
And a swordsman’s kiss.
We lack only one day, a child, a gift
In order to survive.
Once we were the heralds
Bringing good tidings of the Lord,
But we exceeded his command
Bearing the burden of sorrow.
Now we are fallen angels,
Just like the ones we went to heal!
They fear that we are teaching
Our own children to fly!
On board for this expedition
Are a madman, a bricklayer,
A magician, a nightingale,
And a swordsman’s kiss.
We lack only one day, a child, a gift
In order to survive.

Frontiers

I can count nothing but frontiers
In whatever direction.
My star was third-class,
But not my sun.
My body collides with laws
In moving from place to place.
My dream, king among kings,
Begins to fade away.
I recount a long list of things not done
Marginalized in a world I make but do not
inhabit.
Each border is an offence to my sweat,
My poetry, my blood.
Frontiers of earth,
Frontiers of oceans,
Frontiers of sand,
Frontiers of air,
Frontiers of sex,
Racial frontiers,
Frontiers of dreams
And of realities.
Notorious frontiers,
Burning frontiers,
Famous frontiers,
Frontiers of hunger,
Frontiers of disgrace,
Legal frontiers,
Frontiers of hate,
Infamous frontiers.
My country is poor, my skin sallow,
My government proscribed, my followers, “utopian”,
I am a candidate for the inventory of omission
Because I am not able to be “globalized”.
Frontiers that rule
The loftiest places.
Frontiers that are tangible
Yet always unreachable.
Whether eternal
Or temporary,
Frontiers surround me,
Every side of me.

Dawn

What marvelous muse
Could have come down to kiss you
And what tortuous delight
She would have felt, on leaving you.
You decided to set her to music
With ambrosial violins
But at the moment of grasping her
You found your hands empty.
Poor foolish painter,
Palette in you hand tinged with dawn,
Breaking shadows, inventing colour
As you alone could, as you alone believed
to see.
Thus your memory flew away,
Even further than your years.
It’s always news, a story
of kisses and disillusion.
Since you found the muse
Who carried you to madness,
Sing your unfinished line -
The same, inevitably straight line.

Sorcery

What do you do one morning
When you see day dawning
And life is a long
Walk, yet to be undertaken?
What do you do if that moment
Were both strange and familiar
And confided in your ear
All that was going to happen?
What do you do if memory
Resembles the future?
What do you do if all that is within
Asks to come out?
What do you do if the clouds
Paint for you everywhere
Sorceries that you knew,
Sorceries yet to be known?
Sorcery, sorcery,
From tree-top to root,
Sorcery, sorcery,
Every street is your home.
Sorcery, sorcery,
From the tribe to the nation.
Sorcery, sorcery,
Every day is your song.
Tolerance, tolerance,
A little word on the tablecloth;
Few dishes are served,
Many mouths to feed.
Twenty-one, twenty-one,
Firmament of two thousand:
In the sky, the dove
Comes into the gunsights.
What do you do when one morning
All that has happened
Seems to you like a crumb
Of what could have been?
What do you do, what do you do
Except get on with breathing
And with your gulp of air
Get up and walk.
Sorcery, sorcery,
From tree-top to root,
Sorcery, sorcery,
Every street is your home.
Sorcery, sorcery,
From the tribe to the nation.
Sorcery, sorcery,
Every day is your song.

I don’t know how long ago

I don’t know how long ago
I last told someone I loved them.
How strange are all the places I have been!
What days so distant from love!
I don’t know for how long
I have been cursing,
adding up nights, subtracting dreams,
cursed by my own cursing.
I have never been able to do
what was asked of me, hence, I don’t know

what sent you away.
Perhaps it was my own fault,
But who remembers faults
When time is more sorrow? Sorrow!
My lips are now too hardened
For speaking beautiful words.
How harsh is all that I say,
How sweet all that I dream.
I don’t know how long ago…..

That man (Memorandum)

That man who for deeds or words
Is so respected.
That man who for words and deeds
Is so celebrated,
Should forget that he was almost alone
When he stripped bare that emotion
Which is now shared by everyone.
He should forget that he was almost alone
When he seized the scepter that today
Is in the hands of thousands.
That man who for deeds or words
Is so listened to.
That man who for words or deeds
Is so looked at,
He should remember why it is, why it is that
they love him,
Remember that he has left himself behind
In his pursuit of other beings.
Remember why, why it is that they love him,
Remember that finding a reason
Illuminates duties.
That man who for deeds or words
Is so loved,
That man who for word or deeds
Is so praised,
Should take care of himself, take care only
of himself
Because there is a perverse pleasure in believing
That all has been merited.
Take care of himself, take care only of himself,
Because the same gift which raised him on
high
Can drown him in mud.

Last night the orchestra went

Firefly, little firefly,
Come to the light
Of your brothers.  - Children’s
rhyme.

Last night the orchestra went
To farewell the river,
The fauna and the forest
Of my little village.   
The living mixed around
With the old phantoms. 
The trees were weeping
For their natural mirror.
Firefly, little firefly
Blinking with thirst.
Last night a shower of rain
Fell to kiss the wound
Where stars used to sleep
When life was flowing.
Almost coming alive,
They circled transparently,
Birds, biajacas and catibos –
In spite of people -
People who were growing and forgetting
The gift of being pleasant.
Last night, the orchestra.
And while it was raining
The moon laughed
Dreaming once more.
Last night the orchestra
of nature                                              

Went to stop the siesta,
To dazzle minds
With lightning-flashes of infancy
And showers of childhood.
Enchantment
of similarity,
Enchantment
Like the dew,
Enchantment
Of hope,
Enchantment
For my river.

The Stain

There was a stain on the wall
Which was a sketch in years gone-by.
Today, with a rag, I removed it,
And then regretted it.
I turned around: behind me
The wall without the stain,
But then I felt
a chill in my heart.
I had blotted out my childhood
And those dreams of reaching the sun.
It was something good and loving,
But I immediately forgot it.
I turned around: behind me
The wall without the stain,
But then I felt
A chill in my heart.
How inexplicable, that I did not see
That sketch within the stain.
Had my own eyes changed
Or was it my understanding that had changed?
Take care! Be careful!
Don’t erase, don’t throw away!
It would be horrible to fling
Life in a rubbish bin.

Stay

When this sun goes out
You will leave me.
I will go on alone with my sorrow
And weeping.
My conviction is not to love
Ever again, because
The same story is repeated
Once again and again and again.
Stay,
Stay to enable living without weeping,
Without weeping.
When you deceive me
I don’t know whether I will live on,
Because it is very sad, so alone, to bear
Weeping and weeping,
And a thousand renunciations in a heart
That implores
That some day someone will stay
And weep.
My conviction is not to love
Ever again, because
The same story is repeated
Once again and again and again.
Stay,
Stay to enable living without weeping,
Without weeping.

Time to be a shadow

While the night was moving
Slowly towards its close,
We saw the messengers of dawn descend
Hurling burning flaming torches towards the
future
To set souls alight.
Today when the darkness is spreading
Like a voracious drum,
No-one is surprised
By what has already happened.
Enter the millennium with its chains
Making music on the way,
Like a ghost of old torments
And new thirst for slaughter.
Time to be a phantom,
Time to curse
And not surrender the soul
So as to survive.
Once again, death accompanies us:
It is the moment of always.
Once again, space curves:
It is the moment of never.
Time to be a phantom
And not surrender one’s soul.
Time of yesterday,
Time of today,
Time to be a shadow.

Offering. (Dedication).

I would like to offer the musical component of this opus
to all my music teachers.

To Margarita Perez Pico (widow of Valls) and Amelita
Fabre, who laboured to educate me, the first when I was seven and the second
when I was a youth of sixteen. To Leopoldina Nunez, from whom I received my
only two guitar lessons, of which I was obviously unable to take advantage.
To Federico Smith and Leo Brouwer who brilliantly lavished their wisdom upon
the Experimental Sound Group of ICAIC, of which I was one of the less brilliant
apprentices.

Finally I would like to state that I feel this effort
to be a tribute to Juan Elosegui, Friend and Teacher of solfeggio, because
he discovered the magic, the codices of which he, with unmatched clarity,
passed on to me so that I could feel quite at ease among phantoms.

Silvio Rodriguez
Havana, Thursday February 28, 2002.