Cuba y Puerto Rico son Cuba and Puerto Rico
de un pájaro las dos alas. are the two wings of one bird,
Reciben flores y balas receiving flowers and bullets
en el mismo corazon. into the same heart.

Lola Rodriguez de Tió

Two wings of one bird said the exiled poet
whose words burned too many holes of truth
through the colonial air of a different iron-toothed occupation.
Nothing divides the suffering of the conquered.
Two wings, she said, of a single bird, with one heart between them,
taking bullets and roses, soldiers and prison bars and poetry,
into one pulse of protest. One bird she insisted
as the ship pulled away from San Juan headed for Havana, 1879.