Where Oblivion Sleeps
HAVANA TIMES – Havana is not only crumbling in its streets; it is also falling apart in its memory. I walk through the city like someone rummaging through the ruins of a lost empire. The once-majestic facades are now cracked walls and collapsed windows. I follow a map that no longer exists, searching for a place that, for almost everyone, has ceased to matter: the birthplace of Dulce Maria Loynaz.
I arrived to find a discreet plaque, dulled by salt and years. It announces that the poet was born there. There are no other signs—no flowers, no books, no history. Only a staircase gnawed by humidity, and the persistent buzz of flies courting nearby trash heaps. Today, it is a tenement. An oblivion with walls. A handful of families living there without suspecting that within those walls one of the finest voices of Cuban literature was born. I ask about her, and they respond with shrugs. “Who? That Dulce person doesn’t live here.”
Beauty still peeks through, stubbornly, in details that neither misery nor time could erase: an arch resisting collapse, a wrought-iron grille that still holds elegance beneath the rust. As if the house, in its dying state, still wanted to tell us something. But no one listens. The authorities—those who speak of “identity” and “culture”—have let this jewel rot amid the shouts of children, leaks, and laundry lines. The same fate has befallen so many other treasures of the city, now devoured by indifference, turned into warehouses, tenements, and inhabited ruins.
And the Cuban? What does the Cuban do? The Cuban looks away. Not out of cruelty, but out of exhaustion. How can you defend the past if the present mangles your very soul? Deep down, the loss of roots hurts, but it has become a habit.
I sat on the broken steps, looking at the facade. Softly, as if speaking to her, I asked for forgiveness. Forgiveness from Dulce Maria for not having cared for her cradle, for allowing her memory to sleep among rubble. I want to make peace with this history we have forgotten. And though dust covered my shoes, I stayed for a while, like someone keeping vigil over a beloved body. Because this house, even in ruins, still breathes poetry. Even if no one knows it.
Read more from the diary of Safie M. Gonzalez here on Havana Times.