What Do I Have?

Illustration by Carlos

HAVANA TIMES – Each stanza, each line of this poem by the Cuban poet Nicolas Guillen, whose relevance today leaves us speechless, is worth dedicating a program of the nightly TV Round Table show to analyze it and discuss it with the breadth, depth and detail that it merits.
——

I Have

by Nicolás Guillén

Translated by J.A. Sierra

When I see and touch myself,
I, Juan with Nothing only yesterday,
and Juan with Everything today,
and today with everything, 
I turn my eyes and look,
I see and touch myself,
and ask myself, how this could have been.

I have, let’s see,
I have the pleasure of going about my country,
owner of all there is in it,
looking closely at what
I did not or could not have before.
I can say cane,
I can say mountain,
I can say city,
say army,
now forever mine and yours, ours,
and the vast splendor of
the sunbeam, star, flower.

I have, let’s see,
I have the pleasure of going,
me, a farmer, a worker, a simple man,
I have the pleasure of going
(just an example)
to a bank and speak to the manager,
not in English,
not in “Sir,”but in compañero as we say in Spanish.

I have, let’s see,
that being Black
no one can stop me at the door of a dance hall or bar.
Or even on the rug of a hotel
scream at me that there are no rooms,
a small room and not a colossal one,
a tiny room where I can rest.

I have, let’s see,
that there are no rural police
to seize me and lock me in a precinct jail,
or tear me from my land and cast me
in the middle of the highway.

I have that having the land I have the sea,
no country clubs,
no high life,
no tennis and no yachts,
but, from beach to beach and wave on wave, 
gigantic blue open democratic:
in short, the sea.

I have, let’s see, 
that I have learned to read, 
to count, 
I have that I have learned to write,
and to think,
and to laugh.
I have… that now I have
a place to work
and earn
what I have to eat.
I have, let’s see,
I have what I had to have.