The Goat, Poets on the Beach

By Antony Di Nardo

Last evening, just before dark, the sun was a blur towards the west, the beach a cast of thousands, balls bouncing and familiar music and the felt of human flesh on sand and a gathering of poets naked and nude

The sun was a blur towards the west and a goat gathered on the side of the shore among the bouncing balls and human flesh that met with poets sunning themselves in the gloaming trapped in the last of light for a day

Maybe more

And dusk was so much more than dusk and the sounds of voices on the beach mouthing the words of the goat, if a goat could speak, left on the side of the shore, lost to the sea and soon to be lost in a poem where a gathering of poets has come to the beach to read to the goat

To a Seafaring Goat

By Miguel Angel Olivé Iglesias

I wonder what you are looking at or thinking of. The beauty of the sea? The boats swaying like bobbing dots, an experience you have not had? Perhaps in the deepest design of your dna a fisher-goat throbs and skips and strives to surface, like coral wonders latent waiting for the open season, eager to be found before a setting sun bids farewell. Are those your thoughts, your urges? Or are you but a bearded poet in goat disguise?

Associate Professor of Holguín University

The President of Holguín University, Isabel Torres, left us after a long battle against cancer. I learned of her demise too late and could not attend the various immediate gatherings everywhere to honor her. However, that night my hands could not resist the need to type a few words that seem to have been dormant in my poet’s brain. Hence, “Requiem,” which speaks of my feelings I strongly related to her situation for personal reasons and recollections I have of my occasional encounters with my President. It also intends to reveal sides of her that may have been less known to others, especially the younger generations of faculty and students. I cannot say Goodbye to Isabel because she has entered the realm where we all will meet when our time comes, so I will say So long. Emotions run deep, and they run in our mother tongues; therefore, the poem is in Spanish. I beg readers of The Envoy to forgive me. Thank you.

By Miguel Ángel Olivé Iglesias

R Quiem

A Isabel Torres, Rectora de la Universidad de Holguín

(In memoriam)

Esperaste que llegaran las vacaciones para decir adiós. No querías dejar de trabajar, seguías viniendo a tu Universidad y sé que preguntabas por mí a quienes recogías en el camino.

Sabíamos cómo estabas, pero nadie quería hablar de ello... Hoy te despediste ya definitivamente. Ahora con tu ausencia pulula la soledad en estos pasillos, hay un silencio diferente, solemne. Los recuerdos que tengo de nuestros breves encuentros vuelven a mí: fuiste siempre profesional, afable. A pesar de haber estado en la cúpula no perdiste la brújula ni el detalle de una sonrisa cordial para matizar las prisas. Casi parece que fue ayer cuando nos saludaste por última vez en el vestíbulo y las escaleras se empecinaron en llevarte a tu oficina... Cierra este semestre. Cierra la página donde se escribió tu legado, y en algún rincón de este campus de todos, en aquel segundo en que tu postrer aliento se detuvo, habrá un réquiem sempiterno que te identifique como si fuera un repicar de campanas desde las Torres que te nombraron, desde el adiós callado, y desde las memorias que se guardarán para seguirte evocando.

By Jorge Alberto Pérez

By Richard Marvin Tiberius Grove(Tai)

On the rocky shore of a serene and isolated Cuban beach of Gibara, stands a loan pregnant goat. Her eyes are fixed on the vast silver expanse of the calm sparkling ocean. The noon day sun paints the ocean with shades of platinum, a breathtaking backdrop for her contemplative moment.

Gentle waves caress the shore, a soothing sonata, that echoes her wondering thoughts.

Watching her from a distance I can’t help but wonder if she has an innate wisdom, a deep connection to now or is she simply gazing into the mindless abyss of wants and needs, needs and wants, of the moment. As she stands there alone, unhurried by expectations and desires, her swollen belly bulges with life.

She has roamed these sparse wind-swept shores for years, finding solace and nourishment in the meagerness of the Cuban landscape but now, with the impending arrival of her unborn, does she realized the significance of this moment.

Is she a product of Descartes’s axiom? I think therefor I am or is she oblivious to the contemplations of life and all that is offered?

Will her kids roam freely on this rocky shore, bask in the golden sunlight, and taste the salty breeze as she has done and her parents before her? Or would the world change as change often does, closing off places of the past? In her simply continuation of life the evening sky, ever so slowly, turned into a star lit canvas of hope. The silent undulating ocean whispered its promises of change, the knowing that not every journey has a beginning or an end just the pure and perfect moment of now.