The Whole Island: Six Decades of Cuban Poetry: A Bilingual Anthology Paperback - 2009

LA CASA DEL PAN

"Entra en la nave blanca: mira la mesa donde est la harina-la harina blanca.

"Fuera del pueblo, apenas tuerce el camino a la intemperie, all est la casa del pan-la nave blanca.

"Donde un negro de sonrisa vaga saca del horno las palas con el pan crujiente. Saca del horno inmenso, quieto, las palas con el pan crujiente.

"Desde cundo ests t aqu-se le pregunta-, desde cundo ests entre la harina?

"Responde con veloces zumbas: desde las ceremonias y las mscaras, desde el velamen y las fugas, desde las candelillas y las mquinas, desde los circos y las flautas.

"Desde que se encendi el fuego en el horno."

THE HOUSE OF BREAD

"Enter the white shop: see the table covered with flour-white flour.

"Outside the town, the path barely twists towards the open air, and there it is, the house of bread-the white shop.

"Where a black with a distant smile removes from the oven palettes of crusty bread. He removes the palettes of crusty bread from the enormous, quiet oven.

"How long have you been here?" you ask him, "how long have you spent with flour?"

"He answers with ready jokes: since ceremonies and masks, since sails and escapes, since tobacco bugs and machines, since circuses and flutes.

"Since they lit the fire in the oven."

Eliseo Diego

"The Whole Island is a masterwork of cartography: a map of what is, for English-language readers, an almost entirely unexplored territory, full of poets--at home or in the diaspora--whom we ought to know."--Eliot Weinberger

"An uplifting anthology of Cuban poetry that is an excellent and timely resource for scholars and general readers alike. A worthy contribution to the canon."--Oscar Hijuelos, Pulitzer Prize Winner