Martí spent the summer of 1890 in the cool of the Catskill Mountains, in upstate New York, to recover his health, very frail at the time. There he reminisced about his life, some episodes of which he reflects in his poetry. Here he brilliantly and synthetically expounds his principles and political beliefs. Published in 1891, Simple Verses is one of the author’s best known works, which includes the poem (I) that has become Cuba’s most popular song, “Guantánamera” (Yo soy un hombre sincero / A sincere man am I).
My friends know how these verses came from my heart. It was in that winter of despair, when, due to ignorance or fanatical faith or fear or courtesy, the nations of Latin America met in Washington, under the fearful eagle. Who among us has forgotten that shield, a shield on which the eagle of Monterrey and Chapultepec, the eagle of López and Walker, clutched the flags of all the nations of America in its talons! Nor shall I forget the agony in which I lived, until I could confirm the energy and discretion of our people; nor the horror and shame in which I was kept by the legitimate fear that we Cubans might, with parricidal hands and solely to benefit a new concealed master, assist the senseless plan to separate Cuba from the greater Hispanic father land that claimed her for its own and could not be complete without her — such preoccupations sapped what strength was not consumed by unjust sorrows. The doctor sent me off to the mountains: there streams ran, clouds closed in upon clouds, and I wrote poetry. At times, the sea roars in the dark of the night, and its waves break against the stones of a bloodied castle; and at other times, a bee is humming as it forages among the flowers.
Why publish something so simple, playfully written, and not my windswept Free Verse, my hirsute hendecasyllables, born of great fears or great hopes, of the indomitable love of liberty, or of the painful love of beauty, which flows as a rivulet of pure gold amid sand, turbid waters and roots, or as molten iron hissing and shooting off sparks, or as a burning fountain. Or my Cuban verse, so filled with anger that it is best left where it cannot be seen? And all those hidden sins of mine, and all those ingenuous and rebellious examples of literature from my pen? And why make the publication of these wildflowers the occasion for a course on my poetics, or explain why I repeat rhymes on purpose, or classify and group them so that they reach the sentiments by sight and sound, or dispense with them altogether, when a tumultuous idea does not require rhyme or tolerate too many hammer blows! These verses are published because the affection with which they were received by some good souls, during a night of poetry and friendship, has already made them public. And because I love simplicity, and believe in the necessity of putting feelings in plain and sincere form.
New York, 1891
José Martí