8
PARTISAN REVIEW
Do you suffer so much?
Is your life so sad that you conceive only of murder and arson?
What has become of that colt who moved us when he announced
the dawn?
What happened to the man who whispered before he came to power:
"You get fond of people and imagine that you've always loved
them ."?
Yesterday,
a splendid Cuban standing on your own feet
without a crown,
or baubles, or a beard , you wrote:
"Feelings are as indestructible as the purest diamond,"
but years later,
sitting on your throne,
you tortured the poet Heberto Padilla until he was forced to recite
the most abject confession made in Spanish since the Inquisition.
The poet knew the weight of your fists
and the refinement of your tortures .
Heberto Padilla was
bleeding,
corralled,
and handcuffed
when you came to read him the document in his cell.
Cowardice is also learned in the halls of Totalitarian Power.
How the musty courtrooms grow enraged!
Orwell's novel, 1984, swells into prophecy when,
among a thousand mirror images,
the "Hate Your Enemy" displays,
like "Hate Week" in the book,
spring up everywhere in today's Cuba,
constantly,
by your order.
"Infinite hatred of the enemy is the seed of socialism," proclaims
your Minister of Education, Jose Ram6n Fernandez .
The Island, choked by thorny weeds, whispers to itself of your
withered reason.
Cuba has adopted the language of Newspeak. Orwell imagines
the Ministry of Plenty as MINIPLEN, the Ministry of Peace as
MINIPAX, and the Ministry of Truth as MINITRUE,
just as on the Island today the Ministry of Public Health is called
