Rafael Román Martel

Twenty-eight years ago- in 1976- when I was a sophomore at Emerson High School, I visited the Hispanic Society of America. An almost forgotten building of majestic architechture, the Hispanic Society lies on Broadway and 155 St., in El Barrio Newyorkino. One of its buildings is now used as the Boricua College. I always thought of returning the small museum to my eyes, which hold a nostalgic air between the youth of my high school years and the resistence of the building’s memory, which separated us, only to know that we depended on a lapse of time where its large columns could only accept my presence in gray and lonely hair. I knew it was my destiny to come back, but even I ignored its capricious intention, for all this time I was mesmerized by the sadness of the long street whose beauty slowly drowns in the river. On November of 2003, as a teacher at Mabel G. Holmes in Elizabeth, I returned with my class to allow my eyes to kiss Goya’s lover, whose card, shown in this page, I kept as a souvenir between this and that time.