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Hush little baby. Forty-six years now
the night has rocked itself in my empty cradle
Now a gray head is rocked to sleep with the same tune:
Standing at the cradle’s head
No angel with two white wings…
In a dream, in a night vision, while [I was] asleep upon [my] bed during my imprisonment, a voice called in my ears. The voice was the voice of Jacob, like the voice of my father, may his memory be…
When I was born, I was given the name Manuel, after my grandfather, Manuel Alvares Pinto, as was said earlier. For this reason and because I was my father’s eldest son, my grandfather always had me…
Every day when his mind was at ease,
Relieved of the need to tell us about the countries he’d seen,
He would raise his hands high above our heads,
Appealing on our behalf before the Almighty to let…
You Will Be Wrapped in Silk
“And how do you merit to live so long?”
—Because I know there is need to consider.
At my birth someone said, “He will be wrapped
in silk.” And now the guests are…
The bathroom looked as though some spiteful thug had left his calling card after having robbed the house. As my father was tended to and he was what counted, I would just as soon have nailed the door…
Household of eight.
Beds are two.
When it gets late,
What do they do?
Three with father,
Three with mother:
Limbs
Over each other.
When it’s night
And they go to bed,
Mother begins
To wish she…
On the other side of the poem there is an orchard,
and in the orchard, a house with a roof of straw,
and three pine trees,
three watchmen who never speak, standing guard.
On the other side of the…
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…