Aug '02 [Home] longer draughts (special section) 'Enduring Revolution' Excerpts from the Havana journals of Terry Stokes (1985) and Angelo Verga (2001)

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I am not a rock,says the wood I can both swell with rain & burn ~ . The pig farmer's son-in-law shows us the generator run by gas. Is it methane? Propane? It makes enough current to run 2 lights and a TV set for 3 hours a night. He would not like to live in America—too much crime. When I tell him our gas & electric bill was $300 last month he's sure he hasn't heard me right. He points to a fan that looks like it's been in his family a long time. Perhaps he is suggesting I'd like to take it home with me. The bus driver is practicing his English so he can get better tips and meet women who are visiting hotels with handbags of money. Cow, he says as we pass oxen pulling an iron plow through red caked mud. Cow. Two cow. Big. Bigger. ~ . These Havanas have been made with the finest tobacco in the world. Estos habanos han sido elaborados con hojas del mejor tabaco del mundo. Habanos. Unicos desde 1492. Havanas. Unique since 1492. Handmade. Cigars are labor intensive. Dark, cool rooms. The leaf is flattened by vise grips of pipes & clamps. A good cigar smells like shit as soon as it is damp. The women & girls do most of the true rough work. The men, bare-chested, apply the wrappers, shades of myriad brown blended like the workers themselves. In this made-by-hand fabrication center, the reader is chanting Whitman; the long lines & optimism appeal to even the unlettered, like chickens in the States that are raised on corn & Mozart. You learn too much when you go to Cuba, difficult to say anything not too general, or too specific. Beautiful country, friendly people, great weather. My room had a big window that faced east. I ignored an erection all day. ~ . The National Security Archive posts recordings of two telephone conversations between President Kennedy and his brother, Robert, the Attorney General, on March 2, 1963. They reveal the president authorized jets from the U.S. aircraft carrier Essex to provide one hour of air cover for the invasion's B-26 bombers on the morning of April 19. The unmarked jets failed to rendezvous with the bombers because the CIA and the Pentagon were unaware of a time zone difference between Nicaragua and Cuba. Two B-26s were shot down and four Americans lost. Also a quantity of maggots—I mean, "patriots." CIA officials believed the Cuban people would welcome a U.S.-sponsored invasion and spontaneously rise up against the Castro regime. CIA officials also expected that Cuban military and police forces would refuse to fight against Brigade 2506, the CIA's 1400-man mercenary invasion force. Holy miscalculation! Bloated corpses between the trees. Fidel, sporting field glasses, in a vintage tank, laughs. ~ . We brought crayons and lined paper. I'm not sure the children had ever seen them before. And yet the 5th graders read as well as or better than Bronx 8th graders and have more self-possession than all but the most advanced of our high school seniors. Are they brilliant child actors for us to be knocked out by or do egalitarian social relationships change the nature of childhood? The German woman who as a girl hurt her back in a cane field and Fidel happened to come by & pick her up she remained, always unadulterated. All the other children loved her, the fearless poet, the chosen one. ~ . The kitchen has rows of bottles & cans washed clean and balls of wire and string, and a cup of yellowed rubber bands and bent clips, and pieces of tape to be used again Cubans don't have to recycle:  They never throw anything away. Ché:  Ammunition is the great problem for the guerilla fighter. Arms can always be obtained. Bullets are expended while rifles remain. Generally guns are acquired with ammunition, but bullets are rarely or never captured alone. Therefore the principle of conserving fire is sacred. In poetry keep track of the verbs and small words… ~ . Yoruba song, maraca, hypnosis of night In the countryside, bong, bang, drum, conga tinkling bells and slapping thighs for 20, 30 minutes at a time, sweat pouring in sexual abandon. Forsake thought in the stiff European sense. This is the sea, the hurricane, black soil Talking to herself. Opera should be this sweet-smelling, and satisfying. ~ . Students artists activists work side by side with Cubans on farm & housing projects Abejas obreras or worker bees travel to Cuba twice a year Maybe this guy's a loser all his life, feeling sorry for himself, easily discouraged, caught in bullshit smokes dope, can't keep a job or wife, but for a month he eats right, works his dick off lives like a monk, builds up his muscles hauling plaster board, buckets of concrete, beams, studs, trowels, rope, and he says, "I love working like an ant. I love seeing something get done for once." I knew this guy, a real whiner who plowed 12-hour days behind a horse in Cuba but in NYC was too pitiful too destitute of energy to take out his own garbage or wash a dish after his warmed-over takeout rotted in his beige sink. No cell phones, no wrong numbers, no laptops on the bus The closest thing to a traffic jam is a knot of restaurant workers hanging out on the sidewalk No strip malls, no minivans full of soccer moms No hip-hop blasting from ghetto boxes No graffiti, no gang colors, no Starbucks Hurry, hurry up, see the revolution before it dies The blows should be continuous. In a rebel zone, enemy soldiers must not be allowed to sleep. An exhausted enemy gets nervous, makes mistakes. Outposts should be attacked at night. The impression created that he is surrounded. A perfect knowledge of the ground is a requirement. Fear & confusion within the regular forces amplifies our impact. ~ . The singer is given permission by the song to sing her the same way a strong woman gives you permission to fuck her confident that whatever the lover does will not hurt no real damage can be done When the first piano came off an imperial ship it's hard to imagine what the Spanish were thinking Unless it was a variation on the Columbus trick, his bible & sword flim-flam played with strings Pineapple coconut guava mango melons in all colors in dreams The streets smell of garlic and tomato not piss and fear like Southern Boulevard, Bronx Park Once an island gets to be a certain size geography & destiny are the same thing Look at Japan, look at Eire Cubans change history whether they leave or stay As complex as a farm, as simple as a city A beautiful black woman, as succulent as a pork chop A beautiful black woman, a linda morena  has stolen my heart This is what five guys under a bridge are singing to the dark. See what happens when people don't have TV's to fall asleep in front of? I will never enter the doorway to your home The walls of a castle I will never pass through A fruit forbidden to eat Rum for another man to drink Like sky & sea I long to see you No other woman will do for me Cuba, my beloved, my mother Homeland of brave Martí I love you more than life itself And will die to guard your liberty We interview a "Cuban in the street." He lists the 10 things he loves best about his homeland: The women, the sun, the rum, the music The women, cigars, pork, the weather Baseball, the old city, the bars & restaurants Dancing, the women, disco, the beach Women, black brown and blonde women Cars, motorbikes, bicycles, His girlfriend, his wife, his amiga Cake, cookies, and girls. He seems to have left socialist morality out An oversight perhaps When the rebels came from the mountains in trucks the city exploded in flowers and dancing the sky more blue, the sea more clear The beards were real men with guns. They stole nothing The maggots fled to their boats Blue & white flags with one red star Even the hotels & churches sang and the casinos (Lansky's the newest) were looted Headline from the NY Post, August 19,1961: American Businessmen Hope to Regain Some of the Billions Lost "We're waiting," said one. A spokesman for W R Grace which lost a $1,500,000 paper mill said, "We're playing it by ear." In Boston, a United Fruit vice president said a 70 million dollar claim would be filed with any government that should oust Castro. "If a new government succeeds," he said, "United Fruit "hopes to play a role in the Cuban economy again." Forty years later, the buzzards circle, waiting. Or, as the editor of The Crusader, an Afro-American newspaper said in a telegram to the UN:  "Now that the U.S. has proclaimed military support for rebellions against oppression, oppressed blacks in Alabama urgently request tanks to crush racists & terrorists closer to home." ~ . A good night in Havana, dancing, singing. Like New Yorkers, Habaneros are happier at night, younger, more free. The farms are far away, oil in hair three-year rum cheap, the sea breezy… When today is perfect Why do you ask me about yesterday ? When today is beautiful Why do you ask me about tomorrow ? I don't want to know anything Kiss me please, or shut up & dance Cuban hair:  Brillo, silk, a sponge. Nappy, red, blond. Long, bald, tied, unbound. Cuban lips:  tight, wide. Cuban hips:  narrow, giant. Cuban eyes:  downcast, proud. ~ . The pitcher was wild, couldn't throw strikes. He plunked a curve ball into the back of a batter. He ran into the baseline and hugged his opponent, made sure he understood it was an accident. Then he went back to the pitcher's mound & shook off the catcher's signs, wanting to throw the curve again, for a strike, make things right. I look without thinking at flooded rice pools dotting the landscape to the west, occasionally a farmer in boots drifting through mud ponds It is hard to hold that this can threaten Wall Street or Kalamazoo ~ . A NY subway ride:  I'm sitting across from a black man on a nearly empty downtown express. He is dressed in a black suit, bald as the 8-ball, and he is cracking his ankles the way some people crack their knuckles. He's cracking his ankles by rotating each wide foot in its polished, crinkled shoe till his bones pop. The other passengers, their necks flopped back, vampires, sleepers, zombies, the rumbling dead shot into tunnels, work home work home work again, the 1 2 3 4 5 6 & 7 trains, rattling empty, endless. A Cuban bus ride:  They stand Talk, touch comfortably, no hurry Patient, they snack from knapsacks A guy with a caterpillar moustache swiveling his hips, dancing, barely moving his feet in muddy work shoes. ~ . They started coming in on the dream tide about a week after Elian was released (Cubans say we held that boy 6 months— I had the impression it was a couple of weeks.) Babies, mostly 3- to 6-months-old, nearly drowned breathed back to life by nurses patroling the beaches Low-weight babies, babies addicted to crack, babies from counties without legal abortions, babies of high school kids, babies whose mothers were raped Each nursed to health & given a Cuban name: Manny, Dalia, Fernando, Ladida ~ . 2, 3, many Vietnams. Insect bites get infected, shoes fall apart in salt marsh & mud. The highest calling a man can have is to fight imperialism wherever it drinks blood. We are all Ché Guevara, the children sing at play. Vilma Espin, born 1930, Santiago de Cuba, Oriente province Among the first women to graduate as a chemical engineer at the University of Oriente, participated in the student uprising against the American puppet Batista, March, 1952. Supported the attack by Fidel Castro and others on a military barracks, July 26th, 1953. A member of a revolutionary group led by Frank Pais, belonged to the Revolutionary National Group and the July 26 Movement. A participant in a revolt in Santiago de Cuba in 1956, went underground in April 1957, and in July of 1958 she joined the rebel army and served in the Frank Pais second front in Oriente until the triumph of the Cuban revolution in January 1959. President of the Federation of Cuban Women since 1960, Espin has been a member of the Cuban Communist Party Central Committee since 1965, and a member of its Politburo since 1980. ~ . A tray of blue drinks, cocktail, cocktails I think I'll have another while I wait for my bags to be lugged off the bus into my hotel room. Azure cocktail blue! Iridescent shimmer of rank & privilege 2 before dinner, 2 afterwards I believe I'll dance a rumba I believe I'm good-looking, I believe I'm handsome I'm jealous of the easy masculine grace these men have with one another Like ballplayers on a championship run Or perhaps a few first-rate poets, at peace with their tools, rules and roles. The advantage in not speaking a language well yet understanding most of what is said: you keep silent and watch the faces of whoever speaks. You may squarely look at things while others explain them, you soak in what others drink. If you don't talk much you have to think.Jack London said it about Alaskans. We deny them diesel, they employ the sun. We keep pesticides from them, they develop raised bed organic farms on vacant lots. We block medicine, they move to herbs & teas. Every obstacle we erect they answer with a forward leap. I read of prisoners, torture, beatings, firing squads. The more a country is suffered for the more it is loved. Martí who had a great soul said. This isn't about Cuba It's about what Cuba brings up to struggle with. I visit Cuba with all my doubts and the "Cuba" of this poem results Images rhythms & themes I can't avoid You can sue me if you feel you must: I don't have any money. ~ . Those who don't live in Cuba find it difficult to understand the system maintains political control chiefly through self-censorship. Every Cuban has a built-in policeman. This mechanism whereby one takes up the conscience of a hunted man has been developed and perfected for almost 40 years. To those who see it from afar, it is almost imperceptible. I never see a Cuban beach, though all the Europeans rave about the surf and fishing, I swim in unnamed nondescript Cuban rivers in the interior, nondescript Cuban river # 1, nondescript Cuban river # 2, but never in the sea that laps so fiercely at this paradise, this prison, depending on whom you believe. Surrounded by sharks, no doubt, and in my doubts I remain landlocked, unsalted, unrescued. The Cuban traffic cop is in heels She's wearing pants so I can't see hose, but I can imagine them And she has an ass, she has an ass that elicits my admission of guilt: I jay-walked, Baby. I crossed in the middle of a street, I littered I spent dollars in a nonconvertible peso store, Officer. Please, Miss, arrest me, I'm criminal. Interrogate me, Lady with your hips. There's almost nothing advertised in Habana, no buildings named after rich people, no sign boards on top of taxis Things are touted by word of mouth. Instead of an awning with its name on it, there's a guy standing outside each restaurant his banter boosting the menu the service the price. He is most likely related to the cooks or wait staff inside and usually knows what he's talking about. If you want he'll dine with you, recommend a wine, suggest a bar In a crowded juke box joint in the Old City a few elbows to my right a guy is explaining to his girl I love you, Felicita, but not enough She seems willing to hear the rest of his line And I am stricken & jealous (AV)