Variación / Variations El remanso de aire bajo la rama del eco. El remanso del agua bajo fronda de luceros. El remanso de tu boca bajo espesura de besos. * The still waters of the air under the bough of the echo. The still waters of the water under a frond of stars. The still waters of your mouth under a thicket of kisses. Translated from the Spanish by Lysander Kemp

The poem, the song, the picture, is only water drawn from the well of the people, and it should be given back to them in a cup of beauty so that they may drink - and in drinking understand themselves.

Everyone understands the pain that accompanies death, but genuine pain doesn't live in the spirit, nor in the air, nor in our lives, nor on these terraces of billowing smoke. The genuine pain that keeps everything awake is a tiny, infinite burn on the innocent eyes of other systems.

There is nothing more poetic and terrible than the skyscrapers' battle with the heavens that cover them. Snow, rain, and mist highlight, drench, or conceal the vast towers, but those towers, hostile to mystery and blind to any sort of play, shear off the rain's tresses and shine their three thousand swords through the soft swan of the fog.

Theatre is poetry that rises from the book and becomes human enough to talk and shout, weep and despair

The only things that the United States has given to the world are skyscrapers, jazz, and cocktails. That is all. And in Cuba, in our America, they make much better cocktails.

At five in the afternoon. It was exactly five in the afternoon. A boy brought the white sheet at five in the afternoon. A frail of lime ready prepared at five in the afternoon. The rest was death, and death alone