DECLARATION OF LOVE
(written during the Cuban Missile Crisis, October, 1963)
I ask if I'm wise
when I awaken
the danger between his thighs,
or if I'm wrong
when my kisses prepare only a trench
in his throat.
I know that war is probable;
especially today
because a red geranium has blossomed open.
Please, don't point your weapons
at the sky:
the sparrows are terrorized,
and it's springtime,
it's raining, the meadows are ruminating.
Please,
you'll melt the moon, only night light of the poor.
It's not that I'm afraid,
or a coward,
I'd do everything for my homeland;
but don't argue so much over your nuclear missiles,
because something horrible is happening:
and I haven't had time enough to love.
I came across this poem in my dog-eared copy of Women On War. I appreciate the way she holds the ordinariness of love yet to be lived against the tremendous import of nuclear missiles and Cold War politics.
According to my book, Carilda Oliver Labra is known as one of Cuba's prominent poets and "one of the island's first feminist poets to champion women's rights to an erotic life without the constraints of Catholicism". Though her love poems made her famous, her Song to Marti paid tribute to the revolutionary hero. This poem was written in response to the 1963 Cuban missile crisis which brought the modern world to the brink of nuclear war.
You can learn more about Labra and read a few other poems at the delicious Drunken Boat.
