Blind Poem without a Mouth

Nancy Morejón (Cuba)
translated by Margaret Randall

Blind Poem without a Mouth
what happens to the cane field
in the hurricane?
— Kamau Brathwaite

I can’t see and don’t have a mouth. I wouldn’t want one.
I can’t see, nor do I have a mouth. And I don’t want one.
I am a black body, washed by raindrops,
swaying among the yagruma trees
without mouth without eyes
tossed upon the cane field’s tall weeds
waiting for the scabby auras.
Black is the skin of the woman who howls louder
than the hurricane’s eye, beside my body
without eyes, without a mouth and without a noose
but with her memory intact
flying to the heavens
to anchor her pain on the shores of Gor e
or to keep on flying, blind as my soul,
over Congo’s plains
until it finds sure refuge tossed by winds,
rains, sparrows and heartless willows.