Woe is Me, Who Was a Poet…
…or thought I was, which is worse. In keeping with this, I would have become a “fine poet of felt verses,” as literary criticism says when it has nothing better to say. Common sense and love of writing have left me here, where I feel so comfortable. I found a very yellowed piece of lined paper bearing this text typed by an Underwood, following an interminable train ride from Santa Clara to Havana taken along with a group of youths who were returning from a rock festival. Speaking of Frank Abel, does anyone know what has become of him?
HEAVY METAL
To Frank Abel Dopico
The rock-and-rollers love the nocturnality of trains
then
the rockers run away from home
they beg for money at the station
and they go to another province
to imagine what it’s like to travel.
In the parks
the rockers are blue
they make love and urinate in the solitude of sidewalks
all pleasure they find in the cross-eyed hands of Jimmy Page.
They have a calling to be cops, the rockers
they raise the decibels
exorcism by percussion
it’s the train and it’s Led Zeppelin
there is a monastic silence in the rockers
they tear their hair and they huddle to weep in the corner of the car.
They don’t think of the following day
they clasp their hands and kiss the crucifix.
The sweet rockers
rehearse with amphetamines and other complications
to imagine how it is
to travel.
(June 19, 1990)
Translated by: Alicia Barraqué Ellison
14 July 2014