Jose Marti

[amuse]

*don't know how to add accent marks, but his name has them above the "e" and "i"

read a fantastic book while in hopsital (can't stop the misspelling and it makes me happy) called White Rose: Una Rosa Blanca by Amy Ephron; it contained this wonderful poem by the aforementioned author, Sr. Marti:

Cultivo una rosa blanca
En julio como en enero,
Para el amigo sincero
Que me da su mano franca.

Y para el cruel que me arranca
El corazon con que vivo,
Cardo ni oruga cultivo:
Cultivo la rosa blanca.

the translation mistakenly has January and July reversed, but i'm writing it as it appeared in the book. consider it a [sic] sort of booboo...

I cultivate white roses
In January as in July
For the honest friend who freely
Offers me his hand.

And for the brute who tears from me
The heart with which I live,
I cultivate neither grubs nor thistles,
But cultivate white roses.

[amuse]

btw, here's the amazon.com review (am a little too lazy to write one out meself); sue me.


Evangelina Cisneros is a very beautiful nineteen-year-old girl who, along with her father, is active in the struggle to oust the Spanish from Cuba in the late 1890s. When her father is arrested, she pleads his case to a Spanish general, who falls in love with her. She spurns his advances and is herself thrown in jail for her revolutionary activities.
When reports of her imprisonment reach the New York papers, Evangelina becomes a cause cilhbre[sic] among the city's many society women. William Randolph Hearst, recognizing an opportunity, sends one of his star journalists, Karl Decker, to Havana on the pretense of interviewing her when in fact he is on a mission to effect her escape. As she tells him her story, the two find themselves falling in love. Back in America, Decker's wife is becoming increasingly suspicious of her husband's absences. After a frightening escape, Evangelina and Karl arrive in New York, where they are heralded as heroes. But then they must inevitably face Decker's wife and a decision that will affect all their lives.
Based on a true story, White Rose is part romance and love story and part spy thriller. Set in both the exotic, primitive world of Cuba and the high-society milieu of Manhattan in 1897, here is a story that will inspire the imagination and capture the heart.