4X2
an online poetry journal
The Trials of Paradise
by Pablo Medina
How not to leave this island
of lizards and stone cushions?
How not to turn my back
on the sea urchin and the scorpion?
I'm going, as I said some time ago,
to a field where the clouds are grazing
and the lilies hum an ancient tune of nebular origin.
On that field the ragged cows interpret
one another and swans waddle
wing-to-elbow with a lion
and an old dog howls
and bites its rump all day.
Such are the trials of paradise.
I promise to leave you all behind
dozing in your cave of shadows. The sun
is an owl's yawn and the stars
the roe of a occult bird.
I will dive in the waters that swallow snow
and make foam and no one understands.
Cuban-born Pablo Medina is the author of sixteen books, including the poetry collections The Island Kingdom, The Man Who Wrote on Water, Calle Habana, Points of Balance/Puntos de Apoyo, and others; the novels Cubop City Blues, The Cigar Roller, The Return of Felix Nogara, and Marks of Birth; and the memoir Exiled Memories: A Cuban Childhood. He has received awards from the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation, among others. He teaches at Emerson College in Boston.