The Envoy #112 – The official newsletter of the CCLA – Canada Cuba Literary All

THE ENVOY The official newsletter of the

Canada Cuba Literary Alliance I.S.S.N. – 1911‐0693

July 2021

Issue112

www.CanadaCubaLiteraryAlliance.org

Photo by Wency Rosales

The Envoy 112

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Dear CCLA Members: The CCLA is always growing with new ideas and now resurrecting an old idea. Many years ago we had a sidebar to the Canada Cuba Literary Alliance which was called the CCLA Federation of Photography. It lasted for a couple of years but the key Cuban person fell off the face of the earth so here I am resurrecting it with our long term friend and now new Cuban President of the CCLA Federation of Photography – Wency Rosales. He has been a member of the CCLA since its inception. In fact maybe he was the very first Cuban member.

Wency is an award winning professional photographer. You can book him to photograph your wedding, birthday party or special event – contact him at wency@nauta.cu or by phone or WhatsApp at 53-63-2393. You can find him on FB at: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100009883388543 With his people and photography skills we will create some photography projects for you to participate in. Stay tuned for those projects. If you would like your photographs considered for the cover or the inside of The Envoy or The Ambassador you need to go to our new Facebook page at - https://www.facebook.com/groups/270081688228336. When you are there click on the “Media” button and then “Create Album”. Be sure to put your title and description in English and Spanish. If you need a translation you can always go to Google Translate. When you are finished don’t forget to click “Post” at the bottom left.

This CCLA Federation of Photography Facebook page is brand new. We are still in a learning curve so if you have any problems you can email Wency. We will see what we can do to help.

Eventually we would like all of our CCLA members to have an album with their pics of their Cuba or worldwide travels or other pics. If you have pics of any kind we look forward to seeing your new album.

As an introduction to Wency I requested that Jorge use a few of his photographs in this issue so everyone can see the high quality of his work.

Stay tuned for more info.

Wency and I look forward to your participation.

All the best Canadian President of the CCLA Federation of Photography Richard Grove / Ricardo / Tai

The Envoy 112

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JULY 2021 ISSUE 112 –EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

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The Envoy 112

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JULY 2021 ISSUE 112 –EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

On Home, a collection of poetry by Donna Allard, offers an enlightening journey into her poetically perceived world as she so richly shares her stories of simply being in the sphere she knows and understands so well. Each poem stands as a golden thread radiating its own special light.

This book is a celebration of the wonderful inter-connectivity of all that is familiar and part of this poet’s world. Her storied poems are alive with a strong sense of place through her association with family, her coastal home and community, its history and the ways of its people. Nature sets the scene and is palpably present: you smell the salty air, you see the flow of the river and the ocean tides, days shift from light to darkness, and seasons move from warmth to coldness.

And meanwhile, this poet gazes in awe and wonder at the mysteries of the sun, the moon, and the stars overhead in the sky in the land where she lives, her home.

Maggie McLaughlin Author, A Healing Gift

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The House of Shifting Time We are always involved in the shifting of time, trying to explore it in various ways.

In his new book The House of Shifting Time, Laurence Hutchman accomplishes this task by demonstrating how we perceive time in our lives and relate to it in different places and circumstances. As children we look up to the night sky, shone flashlight beams into the universe trying to discover what was out there. In his poems “Travel” and in “Reflections on My Desk” he writes about travelling out in space and going back in time. Sometimes he uses his imagination as a tool to describe the world’s evolution as in “Cloud Watching at Night”: “I’m reading the clouds now; their shapes the primordial / words of the world.” In “Antiques in Spring Light” the concept of time is also seen as a process in the still life of fruit ripening in the basket or wisdom gleaned from a book on a shelf.

In the second section of the book, “Toward Tory Island,” the writer takes us back to Ireland—the place of his ancestors and his birthplace. The poem “Resonance” recollects his visit to Kerric Fergus Castle. It is located in the present time of his childhood but concludes in a movement to the future. In “Toward Tory Island” and “Walking the Dead” we can observe the movement of time back to early Irish history, then shifting to the more recent past as in “Elegy for Sarah,” where the poet explores the land of his ancestors.

When the readers move through the different sections of the house of time, they find places of solitude but also encounter disasters and wars. This house of shifting time could become a prison or concentration camp, but through courage and ingenuity, we survive.

The final section “We Are Always Searching for a Place” concerns various ideas called home.

Houses not only contain our possessions but our memories even when we leave them; they become the metaphors of our lives in spite of all the changes.

In an attempt to triumph over time, we build pyramids and monuments that will ensure our existence beyond our lives. In “The Khafre Pyramid” and “The Tomb of Qin Shi Huang,” the burial places were built by the pharaoh and the Chinese emperor for this purpose.

In the final poem, “We Are Always Searching for a Place” the speculation on time extends to

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JULY 2021 ISSUE 112 –EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

the beginning of the universe. Here Hutchman juxtaposes this primordial sense of time with the ancestors’ songs, the myths and the genetic maps, expressing the connection we have to each other as time turns its pages.

The House of Shifting Time is the work of a fine wordsmith who extrudes his poems from his life. Here is a poet you can trust to be true to emotion and experience -- and to a vision of "love in the voice of many-tongued words, / in the midst of chaos / trying not to forget where we grew up."

This new Hutchman volume is a pleasure from the first page to the last.

-- Russell Thornton: Hutchman delivers a grand vista of profoundly personal lyric engage-ment with a world full of human lives and stories. One feels that they share the space and vision of a grand poet of the world, focusing upon particular moments of life, but acknowledging the world and its moving parts beyond. In The House of Shifting Time we journey in an acutely personal way through the spaces of our physical world and the spectrum of time and history as they settle around a human life. We are left haunted not only by the places themselves but also by Hutchman’s engaging personal lyricism.

-- Daniel Lockhart: Laurence Hutchman draws together many landscapes and times in his fine new collection. His “search for a special place” takes him to woods and rivers, but also to places rich with story and his ancestral history. This is a book of exploration, of drawing together layers of the past and far-flung lands. After we have travelled with the poet, we come back to our own time and place with a new appreciation of the layers of significance behind each moment. The House of Shifting Time is a book to be read and reread.

Elizabeth Greene: I've followed the career of Laurence Hutchman through many books and years. It is gratifying to see that he's lost none of his expressive genius. What I'm always struck with in his work is his ability to mine his past, present, family, family history, travels, and musings for their poetic power and truth. He is a deceptively nuanced poet as well, enticing the reader with what seems like the descriptive commonplace and then astonishing us with a word choice, image, or turn of phrase. He never disappoints.

Paul M. Hedeen, (Goodreads): What I’ve observed about Laurence Hutchman’s poetry, including his new book - The House of Shifting Time - (Black Moss Press, 2019), is that his work is getting better and better; this isn't necessarily the case with other poets who begin with talent and ambition and end with self-parody. This is, for me, Laurence's best work so far. Laurence is a real Ontario poet, and while Page 7

his 23 years living in New Brunswick are important, it is best for him that he returned to his roots in Ontario; that's where you'll find his poetic or psychic center. In fact, he reminds me of Gord Downie, not in what he writes but in something more subjective and visceral; his sensibility as a poet is in Ontario. I remember the first time I met Laurence; it was in 1974 or '75 when I was in the faculty room in the Arts Building at McGill and there was Louis Dudek editing Laurence's first book with Laurence. I believe that poets need to commit to a locality, not necessarily where they were born, but to a place that best represents their inner being and their authentic voice as poets. Time may be shifting but the house or place stays the same.

Stephen Morrissey,( Facebook): Laurence, besides having one of your best book-titles ever, your new collection includes some of your strongest poems, definite candidates for a future second Selected. "Fox Playing in the Early Twilight" is a delightful twilight poem; (one thinks of your first book, The Twilight Kingdom), its ending perfect. "Opa's Zuider Zee Painting" is a welcome addition to your body of World War II poems and "Travel," with its Wordsworthian final line, joins your earlier memorable poems of childhood recalled decades later. "Antiques in Spring Light" and "Walking through Odell Park..." belong among your best New Brunswick poems; the ending of the latter is a fearless, tough-to-achieve yet earned surprise. My favourite among the Irish poems is "On the Quay," written with Nowlanesque concentration, clarity and suggestiveness. Very pleasing to re-experience "Algonquin Logger's Chute," an outstanding poem in The Fiddlehead issue where it first appeared; "Marriage is a House": another vivid family/home piece, with an appealingly humorous ending. "The Night Has a Clear Sanity About It": you write about twilight and night so atmospherically... Thanks for the many joys of reading your recent work.

Photo by Wency Rosales

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JULY 2021 ISSUE 112 –EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

What is Wonder

by John B. Lee (CCLA Canadian Poet Laureate)

on my walk along the Silver Lake trail I came upon a gander nesting in the grass his breastbone carved in green earth where he shaped a shape like the keel of a living decoy a sprue in the midst of which he is still as the stillness involved by a strange transmutation his eye blinking once like a waterfowl doll he’s more than mere meat to the hunger of art and there close at hand on the glebe I see where a willow branch circles the thatch like a wicker crown a child has shaped as though for the halo of dreams a druid might wear a delicate garland capping the mind of the wind in the woods for a maid come of age like the flowers of May seducing the wodwo she’s wrapped in the bark of his arms with his sex like a root in the loam that’s softened by rain what is wonder in the cave or high in the castle bed or there in the mansions of dawn feathered by down where the bull frog is milting the mirror while the forest keeps faith with the blurring of light

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The Way Time is Attentive to Beauty

by John B. Lee

this is the way time is attentive to beauty a closet moth all winter in the shortening wool of a shawl or a snow-shouldered man in the warmth of a room the ephemeral white of his coming indoors soaking his coat to the silk with that epaulet loss like the fading illusion of frost the vanishing lace of a crystal that falls on a river oh here these astonishing things where the miller claps his hat on a post at the end of the day with grit of the grist in the oak the lousy bull rubbing his rump on a quicklime fence or the tupped ewe chalked so she’ll lamb in the spring I am that post that green-toothed meadow that knitting away of the night in the lamp harp, my mother who is counting her rows and pulling the pearl from her work what a lovely illusion of permanent care to be born like a breath in the air a word on the voice of the winds of December meant for bending the listening blossoms of May (2 poems sent by the poet)

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JULY 2021 ISSUE 112 –EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

Photo by Wency Rosales

Apologies to Descartes

by Lisa Makarchuk

I am; therefore, I question I question; therefore, I search I search; therefore, I observe I observe; therefore, I glean I glean; therefore, I categorize I categorize; therefore, I analyze I analyze; therefore, I conclude I conclude; therefore, I think I think; therefore, I am

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Charity

by Lisa Makarchuk

charity rejoices the giver relieves the receiver renews the believer in time it diminishes the giver demeans the receiver deludes the believer debases their dignity into spiritual poverty

Havana

by Lisa Makarchuk

cobblestones, columns clip clops, cock crows and salsa rhythms everywhere

Void

by Diana Lucía Bruzón

(translated by Miguel Olivé) I am naked my sighs are my only clothes.

The night collapses.

You are not here, there is just a void.

Behind an Instant

by Diana Lucía Bruzón

(translated by Miguel Olivé) Behind an instant your kisses reach my ears as before trampled on by water.

Raindrops brought you to me you stole my profile and I trembled my hands rejected your lips.

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JULY 2021 ISSUE 112 –EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

I am stranded in an instant that makes me deep and simple so I can be that woman again.

Mischiefs, that is how I grant you an excuse to escape.

Here I am, bent over this sheet of paper under the oldest of nights.

I just found out you sneak in through my corners.

(2 poems sent by the poet)

Photo by Wency Rosales

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A Love Poem

by Graham Ducker

Life would be much simpler If I didn’t love you so.

You wouldn’t occupy my mind, Every place I go.

I wouldn’t have to wonder how I could make your eyes Sparkle with that special glow When receiving a surprise.

I could think of myself first, Not automatically Consider making your happiness My priority.

It would be great if history Could be rearranged, For there were several instances I certainly would change.

Your strength through adversity Is more than most folks know.

Yes, life would be much simpler If I didn’t love you so.

My Best Friend

by Miriam Estrella Vera Delgado (CCLA Cuban Poet Laureate)

My best friend forgot my phone number and name, he wrote them on snow they melted away.

Spring and its blossoms filled his mind and his eyes with music and laughter, now new friends decide.

Day after day week after week I waited here, I trusted him, I thought he’d call...

The phone didn’t ring.

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JULY 2021 ISSUE 112 –EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

The Sea

by Miriam Estrella Vera Delgado

Search for the horizon and you will find the sea…

Infinite, blue, irreverent.

The Trip

by Miriam Estrella Vera Delgado

I have started packing.

I will travel with no destination…

May God guide my steps!

Beyond Compare

by Merle Amodeo

Shall I compare thee to a winter’s day Or do male charms defy description?

May I tell them of your eyes of gray Your ready smile, your gentle disposition?

Shall I describe what stirs in me Each time your tongue explores my skin?

How I long to set your passion free How my senses implore you to come in?

My pen contains no golden letters Yet I know my passion is as strong As any man who writes of cupid’s fetters Or any lad who croons a lover’s song I dare not praise your chest, your thighs, But softly I applaud them with my sighs

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I Imagine

by Wency Rosales

After the cold, dark and solitary death, There should be an illuminated threshold, A corridor guided by white angels, Two enormous golden doors Where the resurrection of the soul should be decided; There should be an immense space that makes you remember love, That makes you remember the errors, the human being fragility, The defects that now you can correct, And that makes you proud of all the good things That being alive, you made.

After death something wonderful should exist, Because if not, Then it doesn’t make sense to have lived so many good things, It doesn’t make sense to have met you.

It doesn’t make sense to have loved you so much.

Photo by Wency Rosales

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JULY 2021 ISSUE 112 –EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

Baseball

by Paul Carr

Baseball is a bat and a ball and nine players and a coach, each wears a uniform, and sometimes kicks sand. there’s an umpire, then a few more, there are lines on the field. and everyone wears a glove except the guy with the wood and a helmet, don’t forget the sunglasses and voodoo rituals. there’s a lot of people sitting and talking and checking facebook, they’re eating hot-dogs and drinking beer in plastic cups, there’s announcements about events, games, selling stuff we don’t need, and there’s an electronic platform doing algebra and complex equations after every pitch. did you know that he hits .289 when another guy is standing over there, it rained the day before, Obama is up in the polls, his daughter has just seen a dentist, and it’s a Friday? a double-header is not what you think it is, neither is a double-play, and an in-field, this way, upside-down, holy hot tamale, ground rule in-out, double the pleasure, pop-out rule is hard to explain. the game ends when a reliever, not Advil or Tylenol, runs out of a caged device, not the mixed martial arts thingy but they let the guy out, he never smiles, and he may be eating a buffet-style portion of steak tartare in the cage but no one has the courage to ask him, he then grabs a white powder bag, then a white ball, then dirt, then he wipes his brow, and then, and this is usually mandatory, he grabs his crotch, no one knows why, then he contorts, expectorates, snarls, growls, barks, and then launches the white leathered mass into a tail-spin. we then go the parking lot. game over.

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Penelope

by Ernesto Galbán Peramo (The Ambassador 017 Guest Poet)

Penelope brings in a new day laughing at time and the afternoon, demands youth, suffers, burns, while expectation is still a nest.

Penelope forgets Odysseus perhaps in a moment of madness, she embroiders a discretion, feels impure, cracks shadow, keeps her desire.

Tired in those so serene hours, shrouded in a shawl she leaves distresses and wet with liquid she becomes foam.

Penelope, I’d wish to be the man that hidden in a garden says your name, embracing you till I’m consumed.

Communiqué

by Hugh Hazelton

your blabber assaults shot stuttering from television circuitry war bombards radio senses walking billboards moving point this yes this woods fields suddenly stop blocked endless imperative thought feeling breaker metro advert metro advert flashing horizon word bombs implode mediocrity eat best drive love buy chrome new box now battles of dis in formation news propaganda publicity propaganda news authority lies open subtle image bludgeoning unreels blasts truth jabber soaring over air land birthright human voice hands fight back

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JULY 2021 ISSUE 112 –EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

Because Not All May Be Pain

by Ronel González

Because not all may be pain, I disguise with the last unusual sea tattoos, which withdraws like a defeated buccaneer. Because not all may open windows towards a hidden dimension as transcendence usually is, I raise sails to swear to the compass that I only wish to conquer the luminous tower of a city, but I find that I am trying to lie, is it that a pirate of pedigree wouldn’t do it? when someone announces that we will board another ship, in the midst of cold darkness, and then I understand that I am a common filibuster, since I sense my coveted tower by a stealthy mast in the middle of the night, I devote myself to the sinister orgy, after I closed my eyes, and repeat that tomorrow I will really avoid the temptation of the world.

Photo by Wency Rosales

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AMA LUNA

2 Even if my foolish bonfire burns night and day, I will let the spring rain rinse those memories still registered in my skin.

AMA LUNA

4 Déjame decirte my life that I love to see my smile reflected in your eyes, to cuddle and read Roque while I have your body calling out for me between my bare legs.

AMA LUNA

18 When you wake up, The fragrance of my flowers will please the forbidden look of other eyes.

You had me but you couldn’t read my childhood dreams you stabbed darts in me when I deserved caresses halfway you offered me vinegar instead of wine.

When I needed you to dry my tears You scurried away like a frightened animal into the woods What do you know about comforting a wounded creature If you too have been history’s victim deer?

When you wake up, I will be the shrine of another church with no room for those who like you only know how to pull the petals off the most beautiful flowers of the night.

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JULY 2021 ISSUE 112 –EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

A Lifetime of Living

by Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández

I´ve had a lifetime of living On the edge sometimes, hard work; but love And friends oftentimes, and blessings always.

I do not—won´t—complain, not Once for what I´ve done, for what I´ve had For what I´ve accomplished: a home, a loving wife, Family, friends, the endless joy of the sea Nearby, where I´ve found more than just a livelihood.

I´ve had a lifetime of living. I cannot complain.

At all.

Night in the Sea

by Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández

When the mysterious night falls, everything stands still, the ocean dozes off before us, things fade and vanish, creatures sleep, then the gentle breeze of dawn arises, making the quiet waters move, daybreak arrives sweetly and gaily, but it comes to bring life to the calm night waters and to shut the curtains of the night.

Infinity

by Kimberley Sherman Grove

What is it about the ocean That draws me to its shore?

Is it the lullying of the waves swaying the shifting sand?

Or the dramatic slapping, clapping sound of water making war?

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No, I think it is the Openness of the ocean’s wide embrace That draws me to stand on the cliff’s shoulders To see Infinity’s face.

His Creativity

by Kimberley Sherman Grove

His creativity was in a fragile moment If I moved, tried to eat my dinner Enjoy a conversation, then I was an interruption, a disruption, an eruption From our caring and sharing that we usually foster When eating out Was I offended?

Yes, but I mended.

Photo by Wency Rosales

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JULY 2021 ISSUE 112 –EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

Subtle Horizon

by Lourdes González (translated by Miguel Olivé)

As fish do not imagine water there might be in the air a horizon we do not see, there might be a pale brilliance hanging, and surrenders upon dry skins.

We dream.

We are moved by the glow the night leaves on the puddles while happiness never finds us, it never finds us.

Air and irreplaceable creatures are going to commune one day, one day we will understand each other, all that is needed is to fall in the traps and be bitten with our backs to the skies.

Genesis

by Lourdes González (translated by Miguel Olivé)

I won´t be able to look at the water cupped in the vast leaf of dawn, nor rest while the voice of men shatters the silence of hunting.

Nothing can be conquered a second time.

The heron feels the fullness of the universe.

She senses she won´t be saved again.

However, she is so innocent.

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Particle

by Roberto Manzano

(translated by Miguel Olivé) I am too the neat and crazy trip of space and time, and beneath this almond tree when I am sitting now alone to sing me a song substances I do not know happen to me and I hardly get to see them attentively looking, unburying my hands, the silent will, desire a wind, I reason my body´s closed motion, now in this moment what happens inside the functions, in the organs´ orb?

Blind is the hard night of man with his body and bliss is needed for extensive living and they resolve nothing honey curdle or ewe´s milk nor keen crystal or curious gadget: what am I, how much am I, how are things?

Thus the white spot on the old lemon tree´s bark, perhaps the brown leaf or maybe a little worm crawling up in silence until eventually everything is on top plucking their dry petals off against the wind: rocks know so much because they lack skin they do not vibrate like flesh when they move and never lie down to sleep when they fall their eyelids already tired.

I am a body that distinguishes, sweats, plans, admires with phalanges, with eyes, with hair, with cartilage from one elbow to the other, from the eyebrows to the ankle´s hard bone under the slow wheel of months, upon the steely arc of years: I was born and I was born, being born every day and I start now a gentle unbirth.

Photo by John Hamley

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JULY 2021 ISSUE 112 –EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

After the Storm

by Richard M. Grove December 02, 2019

Black branches dance at my midnight window in grey peach haze, a leafless maze a bobbing zigzag labyrinth, leading nowhere beyond the melancholy whisper a gentle moan, a calmed reminder of today’s beast called winter.

Now after the storm, a growl stilled to purr of sanity.

Totality

by Richard M. Grove

There is a pale dense miasma, a monochrome duvet that hangs just above the still trees.

It blots out even the brightest of stars.

The one-third-waning moon is bright, cutting a hole in the fabric of night.

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Moustache happiness

by Miguel Angel Olivé Iglesias To Lisa Makarchuk & Jim Love, with gratefulness

midday breathes a sunny aroma I bask in seated on the porch floor with Ahitana, my two-and-a-half-year-old granddaughter.

I bought her top-quality strawberry ice cream and yummy chocolate cookies she adores at a posh home-based café.

She mischievously slurps up the thawing, cookie-sprinkled scoopfuls in her cone and lifts her smiling face, “Look, grandpa, I have a moustache!”

I smile back and revel in her joy saying a silent thank-you prayer for two friends whose unstinting kindness afforded this moment and tele-drew my granddaughter´s moustache happiness.

This summer´s kick

by Miguel Angel Olivé Iglesias

… the rooftop lingering heat of a Cuban day. Richard Grove … the summers remain dry. James Deahl … volumes of summer heat. John B. Lee This summer´s kick is wild the wind does its thing blowing trees bare toying with twirls of yanked leaves and blossoms shepherding gravid clouds to and fro, their eagerness to water the land ignored. I can hear the mercilessly-sunned roof sizzle above my head while it pleads with the clouds to rebel against the wind

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JULY 2021 ISSUE 112 –EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

and birth a godsend of rain for the land to green and cool down for dirt to be wiped clean and greenery sprout as a keepsake of last spring.

Tu Buena Vibra

por Leoly Lessaro

¡Tienes muy buena vibra!

Me alegro por ti, Eso me hace recordar, que a las personas de mi signo zodiacal, no se les puede retar, ni creerse nunca, pero nunca, que lo suficientemente conocerás.

De ti he conocido más, mucho más.

Tal vez no lo esperaba, como no esperabas tampoco, que tu conocieras mucho de mí.

Me tranquiliza, me da paz, tu seguridad; es el arma con la que cuento, y defiendo tenerla, para ese día en que ya no estemos, ¿ese día llegará?

Ya no estaremos compartiendo, este mundo que nos inventamos, este mundo virtual.

Yo, estaré a salvo, y tú, a tu manera, tú también lo estarás.

Me has enseñado mucho, Lo reconozco, pero… conmigo has aprendido, también tú, ¿verdad? aprendiste que los sueños

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las fantasías y otras cosas más, a veces no se cumplen, y otras veces mucho más, Con ellos nadie más.

Serán nuestros más valiosos tesoros, nuestros preciados sueños, de buena vibra serán.

Affinities of Pain

by Miguel Angel Olivé Iglesias —To my friend Ernesto Galbán. Alas, these awe-inspiring affinities of pain…

A woman I love is aging but I have never written her a song. Ernesto Galbán I You complain about unwritten songs to your mother yet you wrote her one every night beside her.

You are pained about old age weighing ruthlessly upon her but you gently plaited her hours, her unexpected smile your sweet reward.

You saw her lose awareness of things and people around her, still you succeeded in bringing her comfort with filial devotion, mindful caretaking day and night until she parted to meet with your father, her last date, her last journey.

Perhaps, as she finally rests next to him and you come back to an unusually empty home, you will notice – waiting in an unexpected corner, as her ultimate reward to you – the brooch she asked you to find so many times…

Photo by Jorge Alberto

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JULY 2021 ISSUE 112 –EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

II

—To all my friends, who share these affinities of pain…

by Miguel Angel Olivé Iglesias The loss we carry… Amanda Gorman These awe-inspiring affinities of pain hurt us deep knowing that parting is inevitable.

We never come to terms with death, the finisher of it all; and we twist between the illogic sense of our arrival and the senseless logic of our end questioning everything overwhelmed by whys.

These awe-inspiring convergences native to every living creature—therein we flinch when loved ones cross into eternity and it is our plight having to watch them go and bid them farewell.

Coincidencias del dolor de Miguel Angel Olivé Iglesias —A mi amigo Ernesto Galbán. Qué pena, estas sobrecogedoras coincidencias del dolor…

Una mujer que amo está envejeciendo pero no le he escrito nunca una canción. Ernesto Galbán I Te quejas por canciones no escritas a tu madre mas le escribías una cada noche a su lado.

Te duele su vejez que la abrumaba implacablemente pero tú trenzabas gentilmente sus horas, su inesperada sonrisa tu dulce recompensa.

La viste perder conciencia de las cosas y las gentes a su alrededor, aun así lograste darle bienestar con devoción de hijo, con atento cuidado día y noche hasta que partió a encontrarse con tu padre, su última cita, su último viaje.

Tal vez, mientras descansa cerca de él Page 29

y tú regresas a una inusualmente solitaria casa, notes – esperando en un inesperado rincón, como su mayor recompensa a ti – el broche que ella te pidió encontrar tantas veces…

II

—A todos mis amigos, que comparten estas coincidencias del dolor… de Miguel Angel Olivé Iglesias La pérdida que soportamos... Amanda Gorman Estas sobrecogedoras coincidencias del dolor nos hieren profundo al saber que la separación es inevitable. Nosotros nunca nos adaptamos a la muerte, la que pone fin a todo; y nos retorcemos entre el ilógico sentido de nuestra llegada y la lógica sin sentido de nuestro final cuestionándolo todo agobiados por los porqués.

Estas sobrecogedoras convergencias propias de toda criatura viva—en ellas nos estremecemos cuando quienes amamos cruzan hacia la eternidad y es nuestra penosa circunstancia tener que verlos ir y decirles adiós.

Photo by Wency Rosales

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JULY 2021 ISSUE 112 –EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

COMING UP NEXT! Dear Envoy readers, Hidden Brook Press, SandCrab Books and QuodSermo Publishing never rest. Soon, we will have more titles to enjoy with poetry, prose, literary essays by Cuban, Canadian and other international authors:

Historias al Viento. Cuentos de Adislenis Castro y Marianela Rabell / Stories on the Wind. Tales by Adislenis Castro and Marianela Rabell. SandCrab Books.

Five Canadian Poets: Analytical Essays on James Deahl, John B. Lee, Don Gutteridge, Glen Sorestad, A. F. Moritz. QuodSermo Publishing.

Wings on the Breeze of Canadian Poetry: International Reviews and Essays.

QuodSermo Publishing.

Our Assistant Editor, Miguel Olivé and Canadian CCLA VP, Lisa Makarchuk will soon have their poems published in an international anthology:

“I Can't Breathe”, A Poetic Anthology of Social Justice. Copyright © 2021 Christopher Okemwa and all the authors herein. ISBN: 978-9914-9885-0-5. Edited by Christopher Okemwa. Published by Kistrech Theatre International (www.kistrechpoetry.org).

Photo by Wency Rosales

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MASTHEAD – Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández our CCLA ambassador as editor – Miguel Ángel Olivé Iglesias our Cuban president as assistant editor – Adonay Pérez Luengo our Cuban vp as reviewing editor – Lisa Makarchuk our Canadian vp as reviewing editor – Miriam Estrella Vera Delgado our CCLA Cuban poet laureate as reviewing editor

Editor: joyph@nauta.cu joyphccla@gmail.com jorgealbertoph@infomed.sld.cu

CANADA CUBA LITERARY ALLIANCE FROM THE EDITOR: IN OUR UPCOMING ISSUES, WE WOULD LIKE SUBMISSIONS FROM EVERY CCLA MEMBER SO THAT WE ARE NURTURED BY YOU! IF YOU HAVE BOOKS COMING OUT, A POETRY EVENT, JUST LET US KNOW!

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