Grandfather Is Facing Death

José Kozer

1973

Not as if it were an accident,

not as if he were leaving Prague and coming to Havana,

eight years later bringing Mama,

to put her behind the cash register,

instill certain principles,

give her little cartons of imported cherries.

Grandfather is facing death,

not like a Spanish hidalgo,

after all he had a grocery store,

he would close up on…

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Creator Bio

José Kozer

b. 1940

Cuban-born José Kozer, the son of Jewish immigrants from Poland and Czechoslovakia, came to the United States in 1960. He is professor emeritus of Spanish and Latin American literature at Queens College of the City University of New York. A leading Latin American poet, several of his works have been published in bilingual editions. Kozer received the Julio Tovar Poetry Prize in 1974 and the Pablo Neruda Ibero-American Poetry Prize in 2013.

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1945–1973

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