To Stand On A Street Corner

>Archive - PWW Print Edition Archive - 2008 Editions - March 1, 2008


 

(For Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz)

To stand on a street corner for just a few minutes,

Perhaps to dream about smoking a cigar,

Look at the girls as they walk by,

To lift up a soccer ball with his knees and kick it

back to a friend,

To think back to when he was a boy, living on a sugar plantation

with his parents, brothers, and sisters,

or those good times in Havana at El Colegio de Belén,

Where he threw baseball pitches in the Havana heat,

and dreamed about playing for the major leagues…

Other things called him in those years,

He fought with his comrades at Moncada Barracks,

many dying there on a summer day,

And then later in the mountains they made up for all that,

The Revolution came; there was lots of work to do,

There was no time to stand on street corners.

At the Bay of Pigs they settled old scores,

Now the years of victories, small but important

are better than great defeats.

So, let him say good-bye to being President

and all the gracious and boring stuff that goes with it,

Now, what Fidel Alejandro Castro

wants to do is to stand on a street corner,

And think about the simple things in life…



— Luis Lázaro Tijerina