#3,  from The Wooden Horse

by Clemente Soto Vélez

translated from the Spanish by Martín Espada and Camilo Perez-Bustillo

I came to know him,
living
like an h imprisoned in the honey of his bees,
but the bars of honey were bittersweet,
and because
he lost himself
in love with liberation,
and because he did not abandon
his love nor she her lover,
the earth for him
is a hurricane of persecuted stars,
since liberation cannot
love anyone
except whoever loves
the earth, its sun, its sky.

 

(AGNI 29/30 & 56)

Clemente Soto Vélez is a major Puerto Rican poet and political figure. His Selected Poems are forthcoming in a bilingual edition from Curbstone Press. (1990)

Martín Espada is the author of three poetry collections: The Immigrant Iceboy’s Bolero (Waterfront Press), Trumpets from the Islands of Their Eviction (Bilingual Press), and Rebellion Is the Circle of a Lover’s Hands (Curbstone Press). His awards include a Massachusetts Artists Fellowship and the PEN/Revson Foundation Fellowship. He lives in Boston, where he works as a lawyer and teaches at Suffolk University Law School. (1990)

Camilo Perez-Bustillo’s work has appeared in Hanging Loose, Left Curve, Hispanic, and other publications. His translations of essays by the Peurto Rican poet Juan Antonio Corretjer entitled Poetry and Revolution will be published this year by Curbstone Press. (1990)