Vade Retro
After all, we are what we do to change what we are.
(Eduardo Galeano)
Death sings within the bones while life sobs; who, when pain descends, does not turn to prayers for relief? Burnt flesh. Excesses. A sea stained by misfortune. Passing shadows. Dark visions of a holocaust. A dismal end. An ill-fated fountainhead of graves.
The residue of non-living upon the strongest backs. Empty sockets. Inert, undefined councils, (amidst the ebb and flow from chaos to new crusades)— Poor souls, what trials they face! What an excess of unreason! What are they, after all? Are they demonic hordes?
Death sings its song, and requiems leave their dark, damp marks upon the days of a land shrouded in weeping. Death sings of the horror of desolation… and there is more: men march to the rhythm of Moon and Sun… and Bitterness. All things spin. Sanity is gone. Does anyone remember peace?
How funereal the shroud woven from refuse! And to top it off, a lingering flaw that no one sets right. Oh, Nature… so tireless in banishing the “nevermore”! Homo sapiens, sing louder the song of life; and let your scepter become a voice—a *vade retro*… to the song of Satan!
Delsa López Lorenzo. Cuba. Retired from the Credit and Commerce Bank of Yaguajay. Poet and storyteller; she writes for both children and adults. She serves as the Cuban director of the magazine América sin Fronteras (America Without Borders), founded in Mexico by Dr. José Ángel Ramírez. She has been accredited as an Ambassador of Peace by humanist organizations and was honored as a “Distinguished Woman” in the Mujeres Ilustres (Distinguished Women) program of Sancti Spíritus province, hosted by Saylí Alba Álvarez. She has served as a juror for both in-person municipal events and online international events. She is an accredited member of the Mother Tongue Chair at the Simón Bolívar Municipal University Center (CUM). In Yaguajay, Sancti Spíritus, Cuba, she hosts various ongoing cultural programs sponsored by the Raúl Ferrer Promotion Center.
These include Poesía para la vida (Poetry for Life), the Bernardo Amador Yunes Literary Workshop, and special programs serving the elderly, prison inmates, pregnant women, children with special needs, primary and secondary school students, and children in daycare centers, as well as workshops on décima poetry and repentismo (improvisational verse). Her work has been included in anthologies across Europe, Latin America, the United States, Cuba, Spain, Peru, Ecuador, Argentina, Mexico, and other countries. She has won numerous awards in Cuba and abroad and has been featured in magazines, newspapers, and radio and television programs both in her home country and internationally. Her publications include the poetry collection for adults Réquiem para un amor (Mexico); the children’s and young adult storybook Paraíso de mascotas (Cuba); and the children’s books Juan Pirindingo y otros cuentos and Saltarina y el maja rastrero (United States). Her poetry collection for adults, Clamores de un hacedor de versos, is currently being edited for publication in Cuba.