Copla por la muerte de su padre
Poem upon the death of his father

Urayoán Noel
New York University
Professor of English and Spanish and Portuguese

In this self-translated 
bilingual poem, Puerto 
Rican poet Urayoán Noel 
reflects on life and death in 
the Caribbean from a 
contemporary diasporic 
perspective, recasting the 
15th-century Castilian poet 
Jorge Manrique and his 
famous version of the copla 
verse form

A B S T R A C T

Keywords: poetry, bilingual, 
self-translation, Puerto Rican, 

Caribbean, death, father, copla
B I O

Urayoán Noel is a writer, performer, and translator from Río Piedras, Puerto Rico. His 
books include In Visible Movement: Nuyorican Poetry from the Sixties to Slam (Univer-
sity of Iowa Press), winner of the LASA Latino Studies Book Prize, and, most recently, 
the poetry collections Buzzing Hemisphere/Rumor Hemisférico and Transversal, both 
from the University of Arizona Press. Urayoán Noel lives in the Bronx, teaches at New 
York University, and is a board member of the Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural and 
Educational Center.  

© 2021 Urayoán Noel
Caribbean Studies Students’ Union, Canada - https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/

                       This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- ShareAlike 4.0 International License. 
                       To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

113

Alfred Thompson Bricher, 1875

(January 20, 2022 / 08:53:12)

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114

En un rincón del Caribe
 When these Caribbean skies
el año del huracán,
 were swallowed by the hurricane,
se murió.
 he was gone.
Su ceniza sobrevive
 I'll be next. His ashes rise
en las costas de San Juan.
 and fall like a sargasso skein
Falto yo.
 off San Juan.
Su cadáver representa
 His dead body represents
mil galaxias deseantes
 infinite desiring galaxies
en la flora
 in the flora
de la neurona que sienta
 of the neuron that invents
las bases librepensantes 
 free thought, the synaptic circuitries
de la aurora. 
 of aurora.

leyendo a Jorge Manrique en Río Piedras
reading Jorge Manrique in Río Piedras

No hay después de la tormenta.
 There is no after the storm.
Hubo vendavales antes,
 There were always tempests here.
polvo ahora
 Now there's dust
(de multitud que revienta
 (cries of multitudes, blood-warm,
de gritos agonizantes...).
 forever piercing the atmosphere...).
Ríe, llora.
 Laugh. Sob. Thrust
Baila y con tu cuerpo escribe
 your body toward these skies.
el imposible ademán
 Dance. Write the absurd refrain
del bongó
 of the dawn.
que retumbará inclusive
 Bongos, echo. Rematerialize
en la flor del guayacán
 the lost flower in our pain. 
que voló.
 It lives on.

(January 20, 2022 / 08:53:12)

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