Awakening
Translated from Ramón Hondal’s Diálogos (Ediciones Extramuros, 2014; reprinted in Diario de Cuba, July 2017) by Elena Lahr-Vivaz
There they are. As though they are in bed.
A gesture here and there. Scattered. Enumerate them, establish their place and moment.
You will see them time and again. They repeat and this is how they are. Nothing else counts. It is a duel. Without silencing. Full of voices.
Follow them from the bed. Pay attention to them.
—The humid pillow.
—And the step becomes entangled.
—Humidity between the walls.
—The sheet stiff on the body.
—The same gesture. Without language?
—Begin. Take up the tone again.
—About what?
—Language on the pillow.
—A desire.
—About what?
Ramón Hondal is a Cuban poet who lives in Havana. Hondal is the author of Diálogos (Dialogues), published by Ediciones Extramuros in 2014; Scratch, published by Bokeh Press in 2019; and Prótesis (Prosthesis), published by Casa Vacía in 2019. In 2013, Hondal received the Luis Rogelio Nogueras Award (for Diálogos). With his poetry published in Europe and the United States as well as Cuba, Hondal has received growing acclaim for his work and increasing recognition from critics. Hondal’s poetry is included in Javier L. Mora and Ángel Pérez’s anthology Long-Playing Poetry. Cuba: Generación Cero (2017), and is frequently published as well on websites such as Diario de Cuba and Rialta. Hondal serves as an editor for poet Reina María Rodríguez’s Torre de Letras imprint, where he has overseen the publication of a Cuban edition of Polish writer Witold Gombrowicz’s 1937 novel Ferdydurke (2015), among other titles.
Elena Lahr-Vivaz is a writer, translator, and professor. Lahr-Vivaz received her PhD in Hispanic Studies from the University of Pennsylvania, and holds the post of Associate Professor of Spanish at Rutgers University–Newark, where she specializes in Latin American literature and film. Lahr-Vivaz is the author of Writing Islands: Space and Identity in the Transnational Cuban Archipelago (forthcoming, University Press of Florida in 2022) and Mexican Melodrama: Film and Nation from the Golden Age to the New Wave (University of Arizona Press, 2016; published in Spanish by Rialta Ediciones, 2019).