An analogy: I have a lot of friends from Iran. People whose families fled Iran in the late 1970s. People who have never been able to go back to their country, people who are waiting with bated breath for the "next" revolution, so that they can go home. These friends of mine have a passion for Iran that I can only call poetic. This is not poetry in the abstract, this is poetry in REALITY. This is poetry as opposition. Their connection to the actual land, the actual area of the country of Iran – is intense. Poetic. Iranians love their poets, they revere their poets, and I think that one of the reasons this is so is that poets, in particular, express the truth in ways that can transport you. It comes from the five senses. It is not theoretical, it does not express ideas – it is poetry about grass, and flowers, and sunshine, and the sound of a stream. Iranians' memories of their lost country, their yearning for that cultural continuity, is in the words of their poets.

This seems to be the case of Cuban poets as well.

I read (in translation, of course) poems by Jose Carlos Becerra, Jose Marti, Nicolas Guillen, and others.

They each have very distinct voices – (as much as I can tell through reading translations) – but I found there to be similar themes running through all of them:

-Reverence for childhood
-Love of land, and dirt, and nature
-Lyrical language – which is an interesting contrast, at times, with the down-and-dirty imagery
-Overwhelming nostalgia

If I look at the history of Cuba, all of these themes make the utmost sense. There is such a thing as cultural memory, I believe. These poets do not write like the Irish poets, with whom I most familiar. Although there are similarities there, as well.

Here's an example of what I mean. This is a great example, because it is a poem about poetry. It is almost a mission statement, from Jose Marti, perhaps the most famous and revered Cuban poet of all.

This is Jose Marti's "No. 5 from Simple Verses":

If you see a hill of foam
It is my poetry that you see:
My poetry is a mountain
And is also a feather fan.

My poems are like a dagger
Sprouting flowers from the hilt:
My poetry is like a fountain
Sprinkling streams of coral water.

My poems are light green
And flaming red;
My poetry is a wounded deer
Looking for the forest's sanctuary.

My poems please the brave:
My poems, short and sincere,
Have the force of steel
Which forges swords.

Marti uses the language of ACTION, not just feeling. This poem expresses the belief that poems can DO, poems can serve some higher purpose. Poems do not just express subjective emotions. Poems can be "swords".

To me, the most illuminative image in "Simple Verses" is this one:

My poems are light green
And flaming red.

If I had to break those two lines down, and try to analyze them, I would say: Jose Marti is blending the lyrical and the active. Light green brings up images of spring, of grass, of gentle rain. Flaming red. First of all: "flaming" indicates action of some kind. Red that is in motion. Blood, wounds.

These themes came up again and again in the Cuban poets I read.

Here is Jose Carlos Becerra, in his poem "The Rules of the Game", talking about "the word".

Under the light of a moon that resembles the nakedness of ancient words,
Listen to the rhythm, this rolling of the waters,
Night is moving its dark wheels, these words are its meaning,
And I let myself be carried by what I want to say: what I ignore
And this is how the word ponders its silence.

Oh casual night of the word,
Oh fate where the word returns to its silence and silence to the first word
The first snails, the first starfish appear once again in language,
And creatures of for place their breath in new mirrors.

There is an undying belief in the transformative and energizing power of "the word". Becerra goes on to say: "He who utters the first word shall drop the first glass". There is power in words. Words can DO. Words do not just express. Words are dangerous. Words can bring about change, revolution, violence, war.

I do not know Becerra's background, but I do know that in totalitarian or fascistic societies, there is nothing more dangerous, more feared, than "the word".

One poet could topple the entire house of cards.

No wonder why they are so feared. And so revered by those in exile.

Nicolas Guillen, an Afro-Cuban poet born in 1902, in his very moving poem "Tell Me", talks to the people who have fled Cuba. This poem brings a lump to my throat.

Again, what I notice in this poem, is how he keeps coming back to sensory details: the palm trees, the blue sky, the green … This is not propaganda. This is poem as an agent of memory, of communication.

You, who went out of Cuba,
Tell me,
Where will you find green after green,
Blue after blue,
Palm after palm under the sky?
Tell me.

You, who have forgotten your language,
Tell me,
And chew in all your tongue,
The guel and the yu,
How can you live in silence?
Tell me.

You, who left behind the land,
Tell me,
Where your father lies
Beneath a cross,
Where will you leave your bones?
Tell me.

Oh, poor wretch, answer,
Tell me,
Where will you find green after green,
Blue after blue,
Palm after palm under the sky?
Tell me.

I came across one short poem called "Memorandum" by Miguel Barnet that, to my uneducated mind, seems to say it all about Cuba. What do I mean by that? The poem expresses the absolute connection between language and history, language and love – how, in a society such as Cuba, everything is political. Everything. (Again, I may be over-reaching here – I am not sure.)

But here is the poem:

"Memorandum" by Miguel Barnet
I write a love poem
And in an instant
It becomes political

I write a political poem
And in an instant
It becomes a love poem

Then I realize
That it's not the poem
I really love
But History
And You.

I have to admit that "Memorandum", of all the poems I read, blew me away.

Over and over, in all these poems, like a mantra, come images of the land, of the sea. These people love their land in the same way that they love their families.

In Miguel Barnet's "Cuban Suite", he paints a half-realistic/half-lyrical picture, solely out of sensory details:

"a thunder of whistling leaves
fills my life …
swollen from iodine and voluptuousness
a black man with a gold tooth fans himself…
the women of the city move their salt-spray covered hips
sadness is the simple frustration
of lost glances and crimson lips…
Now that the syllables of my heart
Are awake in my house
I spread my voice to all the cardinal points
With a marimba and a drum
I proclaim my love for this land."

This escapes sentimentality because it is so grounded in sensory reality. I mean: "salt-spray covered hips". That is just gorgeous. And the black man "swollen from iodine and voluptuousness." Barnet is fierce about his country, obviously – the last line of the poem tells us this. But he exhibits a mastery of the first rule of good writing: SHOW. Don’t TELL. He shows us Cuba, in all of his images. He tells his that he "is the tropics". He can afford to TELL us his "love for this land" in the last line, because he has done such a beautiful job of SHOWING us his land prior to that.

I will close this short essay without making any conclusions – because, again, I don't think it's my place. All I can say is I am very grateful to have found all of these poets, and to have gotten to know a bit of their work.

I will close with a short poem from Jose Marti, the Godfather of Cuban poets. There is a deceptive simplicity in the language – and yet – and yet … the second verse startles with what it expresses.

It has the complexity, the pained complexity, of "Turn the other cheek".

The more I read "I Cultivate a White Rose" by Jose Marti, the more I see in it, and the more mysterious it becomes.

I Cultivate a White Rose
I cultivate a white rose
In July as in January
For the sincere friend
Who gives me his hand frankly.

And for the cruel person who tears out
The heart with which I live,
I cultivate neither nettles nor thorns:
I cultivate a white rose.