Elegy to the Little White Shoes...

At the museum in Giron about the Bay of Pigs invasion there was the following poem that had been written about some shoes that were found....

I come from the swamp that has been redeemed,

With a story of the past that seemed

Drenched in blood and tears. If you choose,

Hear my sad tale of the little white shoes.

Nemesia, a charcoal maker's child, 

Grew up barefoot in the wild.

She dreamed of having little white shoes.

She knew it was an impossible dream, 

Distant as the blue light that, a celestial bud

Shields us at night from pain and mud.

One day something new, unexpected, came

To the swamp, bringing light. It's name:

Revolution, Fidel Castro's sun,

And with it, changes were begun.

The charcoal makers and fishermen

Founded co-ops which brought them

Unimagined wealth, a dawn of letters, numbers, everything!

Nemesis began to sing.

No longer barefoot now she wore

The little white shoes she'd hungered for.

On Sunday she was pretty, neat

With her shoes upon her feet.

But Monday she woke to the thunder of fear.

Furious birds, vultures, flew near

Strafing and inflicting pain mercenary U.S. planes.

Nemesia saw her mom fall dead.

Her little brothers, wounded, bled.

The hurricane of shots, they say, also blew her shoes away.

She cried in grief, "The planes must lose!

They've killed my family, and my little white shoes!"

The monster thought "My bombs will scare the mothers from raising brave children there.

Also why shouldn't their feet be bare?".

Now Nemesia has dried her tears.

Militiamen have stopped the bombs

That traitors bought to kill her mom.

No mercenary foreign hand can dim the new sun in our land that ensures that little girls

All of them, no matter whose, may have their wish of little white shoes.

Jesus Orta Ruiz