The Winds

BY NICOLÁS GUILLÉN (TRANS. BY AARON COLEMAN)

You cannot imagine
how these winds carried on last night.
They were seen,
eyes gleaming,
tailpieces stiff and long.

Nothing could knock them from their paths
(not prayers, not promises)
through a makeshift shack, a solitary boat,
and a plantation;
through all these necessary things
they so thoughtlessly destroy.

Until this morning, when they brought them back, tied up,
taken by surprise,
dawdling lovers,
wandering lost in thought
along a field of dahlias.

(Those ones over there, to the left,
sleeping in their boxes.)

Hurricane

BY NICOLÁS GUILLÉN (TRANS. BY AARON COLEMAN)

A thoroughbred hurricane,
just arrived in Cuba from the Bahamas.
Raised in Bermuda
but has family in Barbados.
Has been to Puerto Rico.
Ripped out the mainmast of Jamaica by the roots.
Was going to ravage Guadeloupe.
Did ravage Martinique.
Age: two days.

Nicolas Guillén, “The Winds” and “Hurricane” from THE GREAT ZOO, translated by Aaron Coleman. El Gran Zoo © 2023 by Nicolás Guillén. Translation © 2024 by Aaron Coleman. Reprinted by permission of The University of Chicago Press and the Estate of Nicolás Guillén. All rights reserved.

Aaron Coleman is a poet, translator, educator, and scholar of the African Diaspora. He is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts, Cave Canem, the Fulbright Program, and the American Literary Translators Association. Coleman is the author of Red Wilderness (Four Way Books, 2025) while his debut poetry collection Threat Come Close (Four Way Books, 2018) was the winner of the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award and his chapbook St. Trigger (Button, 2016) won the Button Poetry Prize. He is also the translator of Afro-Cuban poet Nicolás Guillén’s 1967 collection, The Great Zoo, selected for the Phoenix Poet Series by University of Chicago Press (2024). His poems, essays, and translations have appeared in publications including The New York Times, Boston Review, Callaloo, and Poetry. Coleman is an assistant professor of English and Comparative Literature in the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan.

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