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| Castro will be buried at the Santa Ifigenia cemetery in southern Cuba. Photograph: Jonathan Watts/The Guardian. |
"Cambiar de amos no es ser libre..."
—José Martí
The flags are at half-mast, beside the palms out in the air.
The Sun is shining over Revolutionary Square.
The people stroll about, meandering. Not much has changed.
The silence shows. The individuals are rearranged.
The statues and the towers, still, remain . . . another day.
The avenues, the walkways, and the latest news are gray,
as are his ashes, his cigars: Fidel Castro is dead.
Havana cannot hold him longer in white, blue, and red.
It's time to go, to leave the capital, alone, uncoil,
to Santa Ifigenia in Santiago soil.
Bruce Dale Wise is a poet and essayist who writes under various charichords (anagrammatic heteronyms). The creator of new poetic forms, like the tennos (10 lines of iambic heptametre), his publication credits include magazines and ezines under his own name and various pseudonyms. This tennos is an example of his docupoetry. Among poets he admires are Cubans José Martí and Nicolás Guíllen.