Pearl of the sea! Star of the Western World!
Beautiful Cuba! Your heavenly shining sky
covers the night with its cloudy veil
just as my sad countenance hides my pain.

I’m about to depart! …

Good-bye, happy homeland, beloved Eden!
Wherever raging fortune forces me to go
your sweet name will tickle my ear with delight!

Good-bye! … Already the swollen sails crack…
the anchor is rising, the vessel—trembling—
is cutting the waves and silently flying!

Beautiful Tula do not be sad, not a thousand kilometers or deep waves will separate you from your Cuba, your courageous and kind soul, representative of Camagüey, strengthens your roots to feed the flowers of the tree of life that you planted in your beloved land.

More than two centuries away you shine again with the talent that led you to earn a position in the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language even when the setbacks of the time denied you for the simple fact of being a woman.

Gertrudis, you broke the conventional molds, you imposed character and temperament, you radiated with gleams of sun pages lit with passion, you loved, you were a woman first.

And today you write in your region of shepherds and hats a new story that is not exactly Sab or about slavery, the central theme of this novel that moves your pen speaks of Camagüey, of the land that you always carried in your heart.

Translated into English by Ashley Rodríguez Pérez