Again another birthday,
Think i'll plant a tree,
With roots and bark flowers and fruit,
I'm turning fifty three.
A smile wide a salty tear,
A very simple thing,
I want to share with you,
The joy that love can bring.
swampthing
Here is a brief description penned by another relation, my long lost cousin John Paul Rathbone, author of "the Sugar King of Havana"
It has always been acceptable to throw a French word here and there in English writing usually without translation. The educated reader is expected to understand: if they don’t, tant pis. I am requesting the same treatment for Spanish words, including those in the title. If Les Misérables can do it, why not Los Desengaños? Angela
"...What happened in Cuba in the 1950’s was so large and complicated that one single historian cannot grasp all the nuances. Many have told the story from many different angles and with various degrees of impartiality and scholarship. One point of view that has mostly been missing is that of ordinary Cuban citizens, those of us who were neither politicians nor revolutionaries. There were many of us who were not trying to change the country; who were just trying to take care of our lives. I will try to compress those lives into a very small color tile to be added to the large mosaic of the Cuban tragedy." Angela
"...These memoirs are based on my recollections. I am writing this near the end of my eighth decade of life taking advantage of a phenomenon of aging that together with my contemporaries I am experiencing: we may forget if we had lunch and the names of friends, but the names of playmates of seventy years ago are coming back. I noticed this with my mother, and now it is happening to me." Angela
"One would think that more places would be named Esperanza, “Hope”, but that is not the case. Desengaños, “Disillusions” seem to be more common occurrences. Who would name a sugar mill the Spanish equivalent of “Disillusions”, and why? Were these disillusions in love, business, or any of the other aspects of life that tend to go wrong? We will never know." Angela
HAPPY BIRTHDAY Swamp Miester
ReplyDeleteThe poem is beautiful, happy birthday.
ReplyDeleteAngela is a genius!