FRAGMENT FROM “ORIGINS AND RAVINGS”

 What of those who didn’t sing

even one syllable of the song,

of those pro-claimers of rest,

of those poisoned by calm;

what of those who didn’t have eyes

to see up close the nostalgia

and embrace the sweet and bitter

without dissecting their smiles;

what of those that left

without waiting for the rain to pass,

who preferred to leave crazed

and not await the trumpets touch;

what of the paper stained in white,

of the pencil decapitated and sad;

of deaf, gagged words; what of them?

I don’t know, but they’ve left.

FRAGMENTO DE ORÍGENES Y DESVARÍOS

Que será de los que no dijeron

siquiera un silaba del canto;

de los proclamadores del descanso,

de los envenenados por la calma;

que será de los que tuvieron ojos

para mirar de cerca la nostalgia

y abrazarse a lo dulce y a lo amargo

sin disecar un poco la sonrisa;

que será de aquellos que se fueron,

sin esperar que pasara la lluvia;

que prefirieron irse enloquecidos

y no esperar el toque de trompetas;

que será del papel manchado en blanco;

del lapiz decapitado y triste;

del verso sordo, amordazado;

que será? No se, pero se an ido.

Francisco Henriquez Rosa is the author of Libros Revueltos (Ediciones La Tertulia, 2004) and the editor of Antologia Poetica Tertulia de Orlando (Ediciones La Tertulia, 2019). Born in Santiago, Dominican Republic, in 1957, he graduated from the Dominican Journalism Institute in 1979 and in the same year immigrated to New York City where he attended Hostos Community College. His poetry has been published in magazines and newspapers throughout Argentina, the Dominican Republic, New York, and Florida. He currently lives in Orlando where he is the coordinator of the writing group "La Tertulia de Orlando.”

Translator from Spanish to English: Ariel Francisco is the author of A Sinking Ship is Still a Ship (Burrow Press, 2020) and All My Heroes Are Broke (C&R Press, 2017). A poet and translator born in the Bronx to Dominican and Guatemalan parents and raised in Miami, his work has appeared or is forthcoming in The New Yorker, The Academy of American Poets, The American Poetry Review, and elsewhere.