Poem by Luis Lázaro Tijerina

Illustration by Annie Wyndham


The Ruins of Nuevo Cádiz

“After all, what is more important?
Food for one’s belly or a pearl?”
-- Cornelio Marcano, a native of Cubagua

The desert on this island flourishes with garbage piles
where once a Spanish city stood, thriving with pearl divers.
Slain like sting rays caught in the nets of fishermen,
their bodies thrown upon the city streets.
The simple and beautiful words of these slaves
are forever lost, while the thrashes of the whips
by the men who ruled them.
sear into the memory of Time.

The pungent aroma of garlic, the mutterings of old men,
beneath the flag of revolutionary Venezuela flapping
like a strong woman’s hand waving to the sea…
Limestone buildings, elegant, symmetrical—gone,
the wide avenues laid out by the Spaniards, vanished,
no longer in our consciousness
but in the wind, in the wind…