Gallery Photos
of Havana
Circa 2000
Photos of an embargoed
city
once plaything of the international set,
Fidel's khaki shadow descended
cannot quite cover the old elegance.
You can still see its
shreds.
The balustrade
intricately carved
to a breast-thrusting Victory on its knob,
the soaring remnant of a reverse staircase,
little "down" left, no landing to its "up"
in the Paladar La Guarida.
There, Corinthian
columns, friezed arches
in the great hall are clotheslines.
Sheets, jeans, bras
pinned to them cause them
to sag in the middle, like so many Old Guard,
like so many hopes.
Through a glassless
window may be seen
the sleek modernist tower of Edificio Solimar,
a beehive of condos for the elite
rising to a supremely blue tropical sky
in perfect self-copying rings
from which they issue, like ants in streams,
the saggers in the middle, the apparatchics.
Outside, street level,
follow the sweeping fins
to a 1956 red Plymouth Fury,
sitting stationary, front wheels off,
beside the Palacio De Las Ursulinas.
