By Norberto Marrero, courtesy of the artist.

Poetry by Pedro de Jesús

Translated from the Spanish by Dick Cluster

First published in English in Words Without Borders' June 2015 issue: The Queer Issue VI.

for If I could live on the vision without trying to say it
https://wwbc.staging.b81.site/literature/if-i-could-live-on-the-vision-without-trying-to-say-it

Pedro de Jesús

Born in 1970, Pedro de Jesús has published short stories, a novel, criticism, and poetry in Cuba and abroad. His stories, which began to appear in the 1990s, were among the first published in Cuba to deal explicitly with gay, lesbian, shifting, and ambiguous sexual identities.

He has twice won the country’s major literary award, the Premio Carpentier, once for fiction and once for criticism, as well the annual award of La Gaceta de Cuba. His two story collections have been published in English translation as Vital Signs (Diálogos, 2014) and Frigid Tales (City Lights, 2002), both translated by Dick Cluster, but his poetry has never appeared in English before. His collection Granos de mudez (2009), which collects his verse written in a wide variety of styles and forms, was awarded the Premio Raúl Ferrer for poetry. Besides his pioneering role in queer Cuban literature, de Jesús is unusual among leading Cuban writers for being based in the provincial town of Fomento, in the center of the island, rather than in Havana or abroad.

Dick Cluster (translator)

Dick Cluster is the author of the novels Return to Sender, Repulse Monkey, and Obligations of the Bone, as well as History of Havana (with Rafael Hernández), a social history of the Cuban capital. He has translated a wide range of contemporary Cuban fiction writers, including Raúl Águiar, Aida Bahr, Josefina de Diego, Pedro de Jesús, Mylene Fernández-Pintado, Leonardo Padura, Abel Prieto, and Mirta Yáñez, as well as writing from Mexico, South America, and Spain.

His most recent translation is Gabriela Alemán’s Poso Wells (City Lights Publishers, 2018). Kill the Ámpaya!, his collection of translations of baseball-related fiction from the Caribbean and Central America, was published in 2017 by Mandel Vilar Press and won the 2018 Northern California Book Award for fiction translation.

Si pudiera sostenerme en la visión sin intentar decirla

Lo real no es este o el otro
regalos míos
de los que bien te deshiciste cuando perdieron
el aura y el espesor
de lo entregado, y ya no eran
más que frágiles
objetos.
Lo real no es la torpeza de nuestras mentiras
ni los cuerpos
extraños que apenas nos atrevimos
a rozar.
No es la duda, no puede
ser la duda como tampoco
será el odio, el miedo y la fatiga.
Apuesto a que lo real es infinitamente
bello.
Hay un falso tiempo que la caída
inaugura, pero
el verdadero es la eternidad de quien se levanta
estremecido por un pálpito y ve
en la niebla.
Digo palabras.
Si pudiera sostenerme en la visión
sin
intentar
decirla.
Si pudiera que lo real no
huyese, mudo quedaría,
o recordaría solo las frases
para el agua,
el arroz,
el abrigo y la caricia.
Mudez para ti. Frases
para ti.
Porque lo real es esta viva calma,
la fijeza
de colibrí que soy cuando apareces;
la agitación
de cuando te marchas, y en las siluetas
de otros te descubro y celebro
confundido el retorno.
Lo real es el júbilo, muchacho,
la
fe
en
los
encuentros.

Links available online only

Meet Pedro de Jesús

“Hay quienes me dicen: ay, qué venenoso tú eres. Pero, ¿qué le voy a hacer?” (“There are those who tell me, 'Oh, how poisonous you are.' But what can I do?”) (Thanks to editorial fellow Alexander Aguayo and Dick Cluster for their translation.)

Read a short bio of Pedro de Jesús, who won Cuba’s most prestigious literary award not once, but twice!

Speak Spanish? Read an interview with the author from the blog Cuba Profunda. De Jesús discusses his approach to writing and the experience of coming out as gay in a “macho society.”

Spanish speakers can also read a longer bio of de Jesús from the literary site Claustrofobias.

Meet Translator Dick Cluster

“I was living a bilingual life in Cuba.” Find out about Dick Cluster’s connection to Cuba and learn about how he collaborates when he and the author are located in different countries in an interview with Bibliobuffet.

Then, see what Cluster has to say about Granos de Mudez, the collection from which this poem is excerpted:

“Grano” is equivalent to the word “grain,” with all its meanings in English, but it can also have other meanings such as bean or even pimple. “Mudez” is muteness, and in the title poem it refers mostly to what’s left unsaid amid what’s spoken, “the bits of muteness in your words.” In relation to the collection, it evokes silence about one’s sexuality, a silence de Jesús has broken, being one of the first Cuban writers to deal overtly with queer themes when that window cracked open in the 1990s.

Read the rest of Cluster’s translator’s note in Asymptote journal.

Learn more about Cluster’s translations, fiction, and nonfiction writing on his website.

Hear the Names

Listen to pronunciations of the Spanish names and words in the poem, read aloud by Lucía Montás.

The Meaning of Muchacho

When asked about his decision to leave “muchacho” untranslated within the poem, Dick Cluster explained:

Its dictionary meaning, when describing someone in 3rd person, is “boy” or “young man. . . ." BUT, here in the poem, it’s used as a term of endearment—the way “girl” sometimes is in English, but not usually “guy” or “boy” or “man” or “dude,” etc. So there’s really no good English equivalent, which is why I chose to leave it as “muchacho.”

LGBTQ+ Life in Cuba

In 2022, Cubans voted in favor of a referendum that legalized same-sex marriage in the country. Read more about the vote on CNN. Then, hear queer couples’ thoughts on the change in an article from openDemocracy. (This article is also available in Spanish.)

Next, watch footage from the 2023 parade on Cuba’s Day Against Homophobia. The woman interviewed at 0:26 is Mariela Castro, a leading LGBTQ+ rights activist who is also the niece of former Cuban leader Fidel Castro and daughter of former president Raúl Castro.

(Watch the video on YouTube.)

As the CNN article mentions, and as de Jesús hints in his interview with Cuba Profunda, Cuba wasn’t always an LGBTQ-friendly country. Read an opinion piece on the government-run forced labor camps that imprisoned many gay men in the 1960s and ‘70s.

On the Map: Fomento, Cuba

A clock tower in Fomento, Cuba. By Ivan2010, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

"But above all, [my return] has made it possible for me to reconcile with my mother, with my home life, and with nature . . . I think this has benefited me as a human being." (Thanks to editorial fellow Alexander Aguayo and Dick Cluster for their translation.)

See the author’s hometown of Fomento, marked in red on a map of Cuba.

Next, see a map of Cuba and its surrounding countries. You’ll notice that Cuba and Florida are quite close together—about 100 miles apart.

Finally, look at photos of Fomento on Google Maps.

Background on Cuba

New to learning about Cuba? Read a country profile from National Geographic Kids. (The NG profile’s political coverage is a bit out of date, but this PDF report from Stanford has an update on US–Cuba relations on page 5.)

Finding unbiased media coverage of Cuba can often be tricky in the United States; find out why the US–Cuba relationship is so complex in “A Brief History of American and Cuba” from Vox. (This video is from 2016, when normalization between Cuba and the US seemed likely, but the deal ended under the first Trump administration.)

(Watch the video on YouTube.)

Links available online only

More from Translator Dick Cluster

Read Dick Cluster’s translation of Eduardo del Llano’s “Swimming Upstream,” a short story about baseball and shapeshifting that also appears in WWB's collection of literature from the Caribbean, with a blog post offering context.

Read more translations from Dick Cluster on Words Without Borders:

"from 'Poso Wells'" by Gabriela Alemán
“Royalty Check” by Mylene Fernández Pintado

Or, read The History of Havana, a nonfiction book about the Cuban city, coauthored by Rafael Hernández.

Cluster also edited an anthology of Latin American baseball stories: Kill the Ámpaya!: The Best Latin American Baseball Fiction.

More Writing from Cuba

Read more Cuban literature on WWB Campus:

“Cinderella’s Secret Dream”: A twist on the Cinderella story by Ena Lucia Portela, translated by Pamela Carmell
“There is No Theorem (A Regguetón)”: A poem about the (probably futile) quest to understand the meaning of life, by Omar Pérez, translated by Kristin Dykstra

Then, find even more Cuban literature published in the magazine Words Without Borders:

“The Lagoon,” a queer coming-of-age story by Abilio Estévez, translated by David Lisenby
“On Cuban Time,” a collection of Cuban speculative fiction

Or, browse a “10-Book Introduction to Cuban Literature.” (The list includes a book by Alejo Carpentier, whom de Jesús mentions in his interview with Cuba Profunda.)

More Art on Expressing the Inexpressible*

On WWB Campus:

“Nothing Remains Empty,” an indigenous Mazeteco incantation about self-expression in words
“There is No Theorem (A Regguetón),” a Cuban poem that suggests that some things cannot be captured in language
“A Meal of Solitude for a Restless Heart,” a Korean memoir-essay about the healing powers of silence and simplicity

Elsewhere:

“When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer,” by Walt Whitman
“since feeling is first,” by e.e. cummings
“What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” a short story by Raymond Carver (this version in the New Yorker is an early draft)
“Futile Devices,” by Sufjan Stevens
“For You,” by Tracy Chapman
“Foreigner’s God,” by Hozier

*For Teaching Idea 1

More Writing about Identity*

Marchers at a Pride parade, St. Petersburg, Russia, 2014. Photo by Maria Komarova, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0, via Flickr.

On WWB Campus:

“On the Moscow Metro and Being Gay,” an essay on civil rights from a country where those rights have receded
“I Am Not Your Cholo,” an essay connecting several different civil rights movements across the Americas, with additional resources in this blog post

*For Teaching Idea 2

Reading Grade Level(s): 7, 8 and up

Key Points
1. Saying the Ineffable
2. Expressing Identity in Cuba

To access these Teaching Ideas, please register or login to WWB-Campus.

If I could live on the vision without trying to say it

What’s real isn’t this thing or that thing
my presents
that you gave away
once they lost the weight and sheen
of being given
and became no more
than fragile objects.
What’s real isn’t our clumsy lies
or the bodies of others
we barely dare to touch.
Nor is it doubt—it can’t be doubt—
nor can it be hatred, fear, fatigue.
My bet is that what’s real
is infinitely beautiful.
There is a false time
set in motion when we fall,
but true time
is the eternity
of one who arises
shaken by a hunch
and sees through the fog.
I am saying words.
If I could live on the vision
without trying to say it.
If I could keep what’s real
from flying
off
then I would keep silent
or I’d remember only the phrases
for water,
rice,
shelter,
and caress.
Silence for you.
Phrases for you.
What’s real is this living calm,
my hummingbird stillness when you appear,
my agitation when you leave
and I find you in the silhouettes of others
and confusedly welcome your return.
What’s real, muchacho, is the joy
the
faith
in
our
encounters.

Related Reading

There is No Theorem (A Regguetón) - Poetry

Nothing Remains Empty - Poetry