I Have a Dead Friend

As a politician, journalist and the founder of the Cuban Revolutionary Party in 1892, José Martí stands among the most revered figures in Latin American political history. As a poet, he left us some of the most moving, melancholy and intimate works in the Hispanic American literary canon.

I have a dead friend who of late
has often come to visit me
My friend sits down and begins to sing
He sings in a voice of agony:

“On the back of a bird with two wings
I sail upon the sky of blue;
One wing of the bird is black,
The other the gold of caribou.

The heart’s a madman who believes
A single colour is not enough:
Either his love be of two hues
or he will say that it is not love.

There is a madwoman fiercer still
than is the unhappy heart:
she who sucked out all its blood
and laughing did depart.

A heart that has been broken from
the steady anchor of its home
sails like a boat that is lost at sea
its destiny unknown.”

When his anguish overwhelms him,
the dead man will curse and weep:
I soothe his skull: I lay him down
I lay the dead man down to sleep.

Translated by Martin Boyd