Listen to My Silence

Translated from the Spanish of Amando Fernández (Havana, 1948-Miami, 1994) by Orlando Ricardo Menes

                                    I

     It is necessary to speak of the difficult murmur of your eyes,
     like salt that is violent
or oblivions newly born, in the fear of being a new dove or
     a decoded temple,
past the night of a wound,
the air saved.
It was not the moment of a known shipwreck or of warm
     memories;
nor of an extinguishable flame for your skin
or of a restless trembling in these hands.
Everything remained in the shadows.
Nothing was said.  And from the silence surged the fatigue of love.
     Rest surged.

                                    II

In a minute, something new trembles because of love; memory
     comes to a stop,
the beat of a soft sun enlarges
and the wound is slower.
Imperceptibly, the prisoner of himself reclaims a reason,
some laws,
or stringent prophecies that give witness
to the fathomless constancy that has flooded our dwelling.
Splendor redeems the harshness of heavy aromas,
     of fired-up coals, paths of martyrdom.
And that thirst, silent before,
surges again in its impotence when one drinks from the cup
     of promised bitterness.
The soul is serene.
It knows defeat and the costume of defiance.  

                                    III

From far away I breathe your astonishment and your intimate beauty;
I gather from the mystery of your hand its hidden music
    and its palpable form;
I remain before your just indifference,
prone, disposed to the word, to the name
    of some love for a burning river.
I rescue from you the dark star,
the perpetual silence of your face, your clear blood.
Listen.  Look.
I choose you from afar.  

                                   IV

I wake beside you, in a slow fog, and discover the pain
    of a spring without source.
Gratefulness surges from the whiteness of the air, from new hours,
     silent margins and imminent rigors,
vast lights that illuminate impossible forms.
Countless promises are a monster.

I wake at your side, a living sojourn.  

                                   V

Today a shadow wants to speak of night to name
    the secrets and hidden landscapes;
today an outline gets forged from devotions and mythic
     fragrances,
in broken beauties and praiseworthy lands.
The flame of the torrent enlivens the smallest comfort
of skin; restlessness and resignation belong to it,
so the vast sea of hope, of truths.
Listen.  Look.  It is necessary to speak: I am still alive.  

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Amando Fernandez has published nine collections of poetry, most notably, Herir el tiempo, El ruiseñor y la espada, and Museo natural. The collections Ciudad, isla invisible, and El riesgo calculado were published posthumously in 1994. In addition to these collections, Fernandez was awarded for his poetry, which included: the Luis de Góngora, the Juan Ramón Jiménez, and the Antonio González de Lama prizes. Fernandez attended Florida International University and subsequently taught at the Interamerican Campus of Miami Dade College.

Orlando Ricardo Menes is an NEA Fellow and a winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize, and the author of six poetry collections, most recently Memoria from LSU Press. His poetry has appeared in numerous magazines, most recently in Poetry, the Cincinnati Review, and Prairie Schooner. He teaches in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Notre Dame where he is a Professor of English.