El Poema de lo Reverso

By Victor Hernández Cruz b. 1949 Victor Hernandez Cruz

In which everything goes backwards

in time and motion

Palm trees shrink back into the ground

Mangos become seeds

and reappear in the eyes of Indian

women

The years go back

cement becomes wood

Panama hats are seen upon skeletons

walking the plazas

Of once again wooden benches

The past starts to happen again

I see Columbus’s three boats

going backwards on the sea

Getting smaller

Crossing the Atlantic back to the

ports of Spain Cadiz Dos Palos Huelva

Where the sailors disembark

and go back to their towns

To their homes

They become adolescents again

become children infants

they re-enter the wombs of their mothers

till they become glances

Clutching a pound of bread

through a busy plaza

that becomes the taste

of the sound of church bells

in reverberation.

Victor Hernandez Cruz, “El Poema de lo Reversa” from Maraca: New and Selected Poems 1966-2000. Copyright © 2001 by Victor Hernandez Cruz. Reprinted by permission of Coffee House Press. www.coffeehousepress.org

Source: Maraca: New and Selected Poems 1966-2000 (Coffee House Press, 2001)

Biography

Victor Hernandez Cruz was born in Aguas Buenas, Puerto Rico. He moved to New York City with his family when he was five years old, but he didn’t start learning English until two years later when his family bought a television set. He started writing poetry early and at seventeen self-published his first book, Papo Got His Gun! And Other Poems, on a mimeograph machine. Since then, more than a dozen collections of his poems—among . . .

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