TRAVELS IN CUBA WITH DOCTOR KEITH ARMSTRONG

photos by keith armstrong

CUBA, CROCODILES, RAIN

It is raining on crocodiles,
bullet-tears on the scales.
Here, where the balance of power has changed.
These banks of hardened green-backs, spread
stoned along the water’s edge,
are caged
like old dictators,
reigns ended
as young Cuba
surrounds them.


MUSEUM OF THE HISTORY OF THE REVOLUTION, MONCADA BARRACKS

Here there are:
field guns,
remnants of scorched earth
and grass
the Guerillas chewed
All enclosed in;
pock-marked walls,
a shot-up barracks
with windows
you can now see children through.

This is:
the Museum of the History of the Revolution;
outside, across the road,
it is being extended,
all the time.


IMAGE OF CHE GUEVARA

Across Revolution Square,
his face beams
redder and larger than
the sun.
Can any one man
be this big?
He is a Christ to them;
an ideal inflatable,
blown by a strong wind
that clenches the U.S. flag
in its grip
and tears it
into what it is:
pieces of bought skin.
Guevara -
whose dreams go on
purposefully drifitng,
pinning shirts
to sweating backs.
In the haze of Havana,
the heat from his gaze
burns a laser way
through the Yankee jungle
to the other side.
Across Revolution Square,
he is above all men
a man.



KEITH ARMSTRONG,

Havana.