Cindy Chan

I Am an Honest Man

I am an honest man
From where the palm grows
And before I die I wish
To fling my verses from my soul.

Out of the gate, Martí sets the tone for the rest of the poem — raw, poignant, and sincere.

I come from everywhere
And I am going toward everywhere:

Martí is a man who’s seen many things and been to many places.

Among the arts, I am art
In the mountains, I am a mountain.

He is one with all that he experiences. Martí is empathetic.

I know the strange names
of the herbs and flowers
And of mortal deceits
And of sublime pains.

He is familiar with the nature and of all living things, be they plants or human.

I have seen in the dark night
Rain over my head
The pure rays of lightning
Of divine beauty.

He has seen hope in his darkest of times.

I saw wings born in men
Of beautiful women:
And coming out of rubbish
Butterflies flying.

He provides symbols of hope.

I have seen a man live
With his dagger at his side,
Without ever saying the name
Of she who had killed him.

He knew a man who never spoke of the woman that broke his heart.

Rapid, like a reflection,
I saw my soul, twice
When the poor old man died,
When she said good-bye to me.

He recalls the events that rocked him to the core: his father’s death and his lover’s departure.

I trembled once–at the fence,
At the entrance to the vineyard–
When a barbarous bee
Stung my daughter in the forehead.

He remembers the time the fear he felt when his daughter was stung by a bee. This perhaps to alludes to Spain’s attack on Cuba.

I felt joy once, such that
Nobody ever felt such joy: when
The mayor read the sentence
Of my death, crying.

He felt the greatest joy imaginable when he knew of his eventual martyrdom.

I hear a sigh, across
The lands and the sea
And it is not a sigh, it is
That my son is going to wake up.

He hears the people’s despair, then he realizes it’s instead the rousing of a nation from its slumber.

They say that from the jeweler
I took the best jewel,
I took a sincere friend
And left love aside.

He has gained the treasure of friendship, which he values more than romantic love.

This poem is fraught with patriotic and intimate sentiments. Martí never explicitly expressed his political beliefs, yet we can sense their manifestation in his exploration of the human emotions. These are the cries of a man who loves and fears for his country.

N.B. This poem is not printed in its entirety in the anthology.