Pieces of Me, Pieces of Havana

your gandolf-like beard preceded you every time you marched down obispo boulevard grey facial follicles that acted like a weather rooster to us habaneros a way a peculiar unique way to measure the force of the wind you used to carry your few belongings in a black bag and a bundle of papers in a folder wrapped around you like a crusader your black cape defied the seething cuban summer and like a modern quixote you fended off passers-by’s puzzled looks with your long dirty gnarled fingernails which like twisted spears seemed to battle imaginary giants every time you moved them in your never-ending soliloquies to you all areas including green areas were go areas there were no no trespassing or keep off the grass signs you didn’t tread from the plaza de armas in old havana to the 21^st street park in el vedado you sat on the dry lawn leafing through the pages of your notebooks and papers you carried maybe looking for your real identity wondering how you’d got there why we called you what we called you we called you el caballero de paris following blindly local lore thinking that in a distant past too distant for us to even contemplate you had been a gentleman monsieur so and so recently arrived from la ville-lumière a man well-versed in the belles lettres and yet and yet and yet you weren’t french but spanish as i found out long after you were dead because you died before i could apologise to you apologise for recoiling with fear every time i saw you walking towards us my mother and me on obispo boulevard of course you weren’t walking towards us i doubt you even acknowledged our presence and yet i cowered like a seven or eight year old cowers in the dark

getting smaller

and smaller

and smaller

until all i saw was your gandalf-like beard looming imposingly over me

but find out i did you were originally from galicia celtic descendant through your veins ran the blood of the citizens of the city of lugo named after the god of light oaths and arts i imagine that one day you looked west and set out looking for fame and fortune and ended up unintentionally as the chorus of a rumba sung in the slums and streets of havana and  played on wooden boxes and conga drums mira quien viene por ahi el caballero de pari’ look who’s coming here the caballero de paris is already here born at the end of a century and almost the beginning of a new one you were our harmless intellectual vagabond our urban wizard without a wand but with a black bag full of your belonging and a bundle of papers in a folder

© 2013

Next Post: “Exercises on Free Writing”, to be published on Sunday 10^th February at 10am (GMT)

 Photo taken from Cubanos por el Mundo