Looking inside.

Morejon, Nancy

LOOKING INSIDE

 My grief dates from the sixteenth century
 and I scarcely knew it
 because that nightingale
 always sings in my grief.

MIRAR ADENTRO

 Del siglo XVI data mi pena
 y apenas lo sabia
 porque aquel ruisenor
 siempre canta en mi pena.

Editorial note: From With Eyes and Soul: Images of Cuba, ed. Dennis Maloney, photographs by Milton Rogovin. Copyright [c] 2004 by White Pine Press, Buffalo, New York (www.whitepine.org). Reprinted by arrangement with the publisher.

* Editorial note: Bodoni is a typeface; a reglet is a flat piece of wood used to separate lines of type.

NANCY MOREJON (b. 1944) is director of the Center for Caribbean Studies at the Casa de las Americas in Havana, a member of the Academia Cubana de la Lengua, and an advisor for the Teatro Nacional de Cuba. One of the foremost Cuban writers and intellectuals of her generation, her publications include several books of poetry and theater as well as critical studies of Cuban history and literature. In 2001 she won Cuba's Premio de la Critica for her verse collection La quinta de los molinos, and in 2002 she helped honor Roberto Fernandez Retamar as the fellow of the Puterbaugh Conference on World Literature at the University of Oklahoma (see WLT, Summer-Autumn 2002, 27, 52-53).