The Envoy #121 – The official newsletter of the CCLA – Canada Cuba Literary Alliance.

THE ENVOY The official newsletter of the

Canada Cuba Literary Alliance I.S.S.N. – 1911‐0693

November, 2022 Issue 121 www.CanadaCubaLiteraryAlliance.org

Photo by Richard M. Grove

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2022 ENVOY-121 EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

Patrick Connors

Home Address: Apt 809 - 1900 Sheppard Avenue East Toronto, ON M2J 4T4 E-Mail: patrickjt.connors@gmail.com Cell Phone: 647-271-8610 Submissions: All I Could Get Down; Toil; All I Have to Do is Write.

Bio: Pat Connors first chapbook, Scarborough Songs, was released by Lyricalmyrical Press in 2013, and charted on the Toronto Poetry Map. Other publication credits include: The Toronto Quarterly; Spadina Literary Review; Sharing Spaces; Tamaracks; and Tending the Fire.

His first full collection, The Other Life, is newly released by Mosaic Press.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/patrick.j.connors.3 Twitter: https://twitter.com/81912CON

All I Could Get Down

for S.O'B

I wanted to write a poem.

It was going to be witty, clever, and have lasting social significance.

The sort of thing that might get me noticed, and hopefully printed in a grassroots literary journal.

My intention was to create something that would make your day better, if not change the world.

Because I believe in the power of poetry.

I was attaining to the heights I can only find in pure language and the quest for truth.

Since you are still reading, I assume these images resonate with you.

Please come inside.

I apologize for the mess.

It is the result of uncontrolled impulse, blood pressure raised by the pursuit of nothingness, conflict without resolution, and the other false notions which pass for thought.

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2022 ENVOY-121 EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

Still, I have my training to fall back on. Many layers of the multi-disciplinary false appeal to authority I founded my adolescence and young adulthood on ignoring.

If I unwound and rewove even one thread from this convoluted tapestry, I would have the slack to create something worth binding.

But I just ran out of beer.

Toil

for Dane

Blinded by beams of mind-numbing light from a soulless, fluorescent sun you begin another nameless day.

The air crackles bolts of static buzzes and hums its din monotone which makes hearing hard and hearts harder.

Surrounded by a sea of hope gone cold you hold your breath and jump feetfirst not knowing when you will hit ground.

You are a digger.

You trace a line with common courtesy around basic humanity and then cut into it.

You dig, try to get below the surface.

The terrain is bare and unyielding so you dig and you dig some more.

You are not sure of what you will find, how to recognize the results of your work if they are real or have any value to anyone.

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November

2022 ENVOY-121 EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

By Wency Rosales

By Chris Lord

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2022 ENVOY-121 EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

All I Have To Do Is Write

for Jeannine

Hemingway was overcome by his need to personify strength and manhood.

Sylvia Plath endured misery, depression, and Ted Hughes, until she could no more.

Dylan Thomas raged, debauched, and womanized, until his light died.

Szymborska told us about having to clean up after war. John McCrae wrote Canada’s greatest poem during World War I. Joy Harjo became American Poet Laureate describing the fallout of the war they wage on her own people.

We are all at war on many fronts.

Some of it in the where we are, some of it unresolved battles from years gone by.

Some of these wars we fight alone, others in solidarity with a found community. Sometimes it feels all is lost, but this usually precedes victory.

I am blessed and honoured to share my words, to be part of an ongoing dialogue, to try and make sense of the stuff of our lives.

Notes on Prior Publication "All I Could Get Down" - Canadian Stories, August/September 2021.

"Toil" - Literature for the People, issue 2, April 2021 “All I Have To Do Is Write” is currently unpublished.

All rights reverted to me upon publication.

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2022 ENVOY-121 EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

By Karen Naranjo

By Wency Rosales

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2022 ENVOY-121 EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

Sigh From a Kind Traveller

Niagara Falls, Wayaanag-gakaabikaawang, Tiorá:kahre 28 January, 2021, for Jose María Heredia

By Catharine Beeman When I first saw you, at 19, I had not yet fled my country, on its way to being not my country.

The second time, going on 25, on my way to exile, shock— they had turned you half-off, exposing your Silurian fossiliferous shales, limestones and dolomites, down to your sandstone base.

Showing your purple red underbelly— only one bump in your see-saw affair with man whose diversion of your waters prolongs now your height and life.

Was it then I fell in love with rock?

Now, under the full white wolf moon freezing gouts of water thick as festive eggnog white in rainbow circles of Cuban blue and red many nation sacred second stopping place of the seven fires home of winged thunderers In times of separation when only our thoughts may wander to yearned for lands, our arms surrounding only phantoms of our beloved, though we plunge to the depths of Falls as hurtled rocks battered and breath-shorn—

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2022 ENVOY-121 EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

as cedar scent rises to spirit we rise, we rise as mist to travel the world again O my Niagara surrounded by trees where you are ever wild.

As a way to celebrate Cuban poet and National Hero Jose Martí’s 168th birthday, 28 January, 2021, in this year of pandemic, Niagara Falls, celebrated in the 1824 Cuban poem by Jose María Heredia, was spotlit with the colours of the Cuban flag and livecast, under the full of the moon, for several hours.

Wayaanag-gakaabikaawang and Tiorá:kahre are respectively an Ojibway and Mohawk name for the Falls, sacred to and criss-crossed by several First Peoples and territories.

Suspiro de viajera bondadosa Cataratas del Niágara, Wayaanag-gakaabikaawang, Tiorá:kahre 28 de enero, 2021, para Jose María Heredia Cuando, a los 19 años, te vi por la primera vez aún no había huido de mi país, en camino de no ser mi país.

La segunda vez, a los casi 25 años, en mi camino al exilio, choque— te habían apagado a medias, dejando al descubierto tus Silurianos esquistos, calizos, dolomites fosiliferous hasta tu fondo arenisco.

Mostrando tu vientre rojo púrpura— solamente un bache en tus vaivenes con la humanidad cuyo desvío de tus aguas ahora alargara tu altura y tu vida. ¿Fue entonces cuando me enamoré de las rocas?

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2022 ENVOY-121 EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

Ahora, debajo de la luna del lobo llena y blanquea las gotas heladas de agua espesas como Crema de leche de fiesta blancas en círculos arco-iris de azul y rojo cubano cataratas sagradas a muchas naciones segunda parada de los siete fuegos hogar de truenos alados En tiempos de separación cuando sólo nuestros pensamientos pueden errar por tierras anheladas, nuestros brazos sólo rodean fantasmas de nuestros seres amados, aunque caemos a las profundidades de las Cataratas como rocas arrojadas maltrechas, nuestro aliento cortado— como la esencia del cedro alza al espíritu alzamos, alzamos como bruma para viajar otra vez por el mundo O mi Niágara, rodeado por árboles donde eres siempre salvaje.

Para celebrar el natalicio 168 del poeta y Héroe Nacional cubano, Jose Martí, el 28 de enero de 2021, en este año de pandemia, las Cataratas de Niágara, celebradas en el poema cubano de 1824 de Jose María Heredia, fueron iluminadas con los colores de la bandera cubana y livecast, bajo de la luna llena durante varias horas.

Wayaanag-gakaabikaawang y Tiorá:kahre son respectivamente nombres Ojibway y Mohawk para las Cataratas, sagrados y atravesados por diversos Pueblos Originarios y territorios.

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2022 ENVOY-121 EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

Entities

By Miguel Angel Olivé Iglesias … entities with a life of their own. Antony Di Nardo I I feel my city’s spirit as I walk. I listen to its heartbeat while I cruise the streets in search of meanings close to the soil from where the city rises, honoring the sky it towers to. I weigh my city’s mood, perceive how its entity smiles or weeps how it echoes across the web of time how it guards its sons and daughters, proud of its heritage intent on outlining the future solid in the vessel of the now. I take in my city, every corner, every turn, the architecture that greets me, the people who cross my path, family and friends who give sense to it all and infuse a breath of life into the soul of my city.

II I overhear noises out in the street. They filter through the window in distinct voices, prattle, chirps, barking, chimes vrooms and whistles, horns and hustle and bustle.

I know the sounds inside my home, they dance in airy performances, animate/inanimate entities deploying their acoustic silhouettes, enveloping me, cueing aromas, images, degustation.

I listen to resonances inside me: 10

By Jorge Alberto

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2022 ENVOY-121 EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

blood streaming up and down my body synapses lighting up in my brain or the familiar howl of a hungry stomach blaring out its conditioned status.

Noises, sounds, resonances manifesting life, outlining it in aural dimensions I catch and shape into words.

III I am sure most of the morning sun splays its hot fingers only on my home´s roof.

Only on it, as if taking it all out on me, so cool in my room last night. It´s a game of fire and burn charring the paint that sizzles away—I can hear it sing so near, so hurt. Then, in connivance of elements, rain suddenly reaches down, its hand showering wet essence and the sizzling grows frantic and louder.

I’m sure heat and raindrops are animate entities allying in a whimsical display of haywire weather.

IV Dear Tai, I found a picture our friend Jorge took back in 2010 (You had not had the pleasure of meeting me yet, hahaha). I like it and thought to send it to you as I know you´ll like not me in the picture (hahaha) but the living entity behind me, the alluring sea, and the memories it brings. I posed for the picture standing by the Gibara seawall overlooking the ocean that mesmerizes and talks to us in words of salt and waves. I recalled Louise Halfe´s line Water speaks to me and trembled in recognition

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By Miguel Olivé

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2022 ENVOY-121 EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

of the ocean´s power to communicate and transcend, to be with us in times of joy and help heal like a friend does in hours of darkness. This is the sea Kim Grove gives into the ocean’s wide embrace, and Jorge finds shelter in and writes about in his poems, My Gibara sea. It is the ocean that you fabulously reminisce in lines I love, the divinity of blue. Finally, it is my own sea, which I sing to in these and in many humble lines, Again Gibara comes and blesses me, she comes in carousels of waves and sandy welcomes…

Hope you like the picture and the huge meaning of that overwhelming entity now calmly breathing behind me. Hope it inspires more poems in you and, if things get better, I hope that same sea surrounds you in your dreams and carries you back to Cuba for a visit and a swim!

Here, your Wingman

… my father’s alive in this fist. John B. Lee

ALIVE

My father’s alive in this and my previous poems to him as much as my mother’s alive in my poems to her and I suddenly roll over in bed right after reading John B. Lee’s piece “The Art of Shaking Hands”.

I thought of me as a proud son of my parents, of the natural/intentional seeds of education they tirelessly planted in my sister and me over the years, yet I’ve wondered lately, Was I a good son? Did my father’s grip or grin,

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2022 ENVOY-121 EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

word or action and my mother’s kiss or hug, tear or smile sink in deep enough?

Sometimes I fear –it hurts– I was not as good to them as I should have been… Then I revisit Lee’s poem and I feel somehow they were proud of me— they left proud of their son and daughter, of the seeds they planted, which grew and stand firm today knowing father and mother are alive in my poems, are alive in the indelible memories we proudly preserve.

By Chris Lord

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2022 ENVOY-121 EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

THIS BLUE

By Miguel Angel Olivé Iglesias

On this /Blue, sky-filled day. Richard Grove The divinity of blue. Richard Grove Delighted to contemplate so much blue. Adislenis Castro This sky blue This ocean blue This sheer blue This awesome blue This divine blue This blue that soothes This blue that nurtures This blue that lures This blue that mirrors Gibara´s hues.

In Search of View

By Richard M. Grove Up steep hill, through snapping branches face sun-stroked by quest of distant view.

Feeding the Future

By Richard M. Grove Time-felled trees lie in silence feeding the future.

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2022 ENVOY-121 EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

Seedlings reach through Earth’s sponge of moss to dappled sun.

Tender new white pine found root in moss covered stump of maple.

By Raidel Castellanos

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2022 ENVOY-121 EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

The River Found Me

By Richard M. Grove

I headed, solo, east into the insect humming quiet afternoon of the deep woods along the Opeongo River path.

Mid-September spilled gently from the quietude of Victoria Lake.

In the distance a tap tap tap echoed through breezeless trees.

I tiptoed over rounded boulders of storm-swept, washed out path.

A fallen silver birch pointed to directionless paths through tangled woods into Canadian wilderness.

Hundreds of squirrels-nibbled Pinecones, strewn over sun-freckled paths in echoed silence.

Decaying golden birch surrounded by lush ferns demanded quiet contemplation.

Opeongo River, sparkling black, tenderly talked me south to whispering shore.

On the way back to camp growing silence, as I leave murmuring river behind.

Dusk draped path chattered under quickening footfalls.

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2022 ENVOY-121 EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

By Wency Rosales

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2022 ENVOY-121 EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

By Victor Manuel Velázquez The photo below is from Awá, a village where it is intended to turn hunters into farmers, the girl who looks through the keyhole is the daughter of a cacique. The animal, his pet, is a coati. The text was born yesterday, still a bit raw; it talks about dreams and a forest that moves.

dreams:

The hair of the Caesars undulates, the hips eaten away by kisses in the morning, the pubes sticking out with sensual and bristling little Hitler mustaches, the heraldic jipijapa hats that savor the phallic discipline of bald men.

The word ripples that meek roar that overflows the faces of men, that measured cry that moves the thought between sapiens and sapiens. It undulates, I say, in manners and in cathedrals, which is where the true power of custom is founded and consolidated.

Come to us, in such a way, the countable present hour that frays eternity in two.

Fill the streets and squares of San Isidoro with the gong of the forest, because it is a festival.

And the owner of the light has decreed a party.

It's a pity that the horizon swells with that other supernumerary forest, a forest of rebel axes, rakes, scythes, brushes, voices, slaps, that shifting grove that visited Macbeth during his sleep.

Who'd say! But if it seems that we are happy like this, so far from the plural innocence of the sea, and in the heart so close.

What a pleasant and devastating unison!

An icy glare can be seen, a backfire in the Argentine air, a firing squad opening fire against the rarefied air that populates us like tuberculosis, full of couplets and stridencies and touches of an old bugle.

For some reason there are kites bobbing in the afternoon without a bird. The sky knows better than anyone what the sea is, because it knows its secret treasure of the drowned, where the light bursts into a siesta of plankton and trash, where the mute homeland of the abyss smokes.

And where someone, any ordinary Joe of the poor and Sunday mass, is still waiting for the harvest of the loaves and fishes, the dreams with which they bought their freedom one day of the miracle already lost in memory.

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2022 ENVOY-121 EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

La foto es de Awá, una aldea donde se pretende convertir a cazadores en agricultores, la niña que mira por la cerradura es hija del cacique. El animal, su mascota, es un coatí. El texto nació ayer, un poco crudo aún, habla de los sueños y de un bosque que camina.

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2022 ENVOY-121 EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

Sueños:

Ondulan las cabelleras de los césares, las caderas carcomidas a besos por la mañana, los pubis asomados con sensuales y erizados bigotitos hitlerianos, los heráldicos sombreros de jipijapa que degustan la fálica disciplina de los calvos.

Ondula la palabra, ese manso rugido que desborda la cara de los hombres, ese grito mesurado que mueve el pensamiento entre sapiens y sapiens. Ondula digo, en las maneras y en las catedrales, que es donde se funda y consolida el verdadero poder de la costumbre.

Llegue a nos, de tal modo, la numerable hora presente que deshilacha en dos la eternidad. Abarrote el gong del bosque las calles y plazas de San Isidoro, porque es fiesta.

Y ha decretado fiesta el dueño de la luz.

Pena que el horizonte se abulte de aquel otro bosque supernumerario, floresta de hachas sublevadas, rastrillos, guadañas, pinceles, voces, bofetadas, aquella arboleda movediza que visitaba a Macbeth durante el sueño. ¡Quién lo diría! Pero si pareciera que somos felices así, tan lejos de la plural ingenuidad del mar, y en el corazón tan cerca. ¡Qué grato y demoledor unísono!

Se divisa un fulgor glacial, un petardeo en el aire argentino, un pelotón de fusilamiento abriendo fuego contra el aire enrarecido que nos puebla como una tuberculosis, lleno de coplas y estridencias y toques de añejo clarín.

Por algún motivo hay papalotes cabeceando en la tarde sin un pájaro. El cielo sabe mejor que nadie lo que es el mar, pues conoce su secreto tesoro de ahogados, donde la luz irrumpe en una siesta de plancton y morralla, donde humea la muda patria del abismo.

Y donde alguien, cualquier juansinnada de la masa pobre y dominical, aún espera por la cosecha de los panes y los peces, los sueños con que compraron su libertad un día del milagro ya perdido en la memoria.

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2022 ENVOY-121 EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

Two years ago Eva and I published Fire and Water: Love Poems. Here is my poem Song for Kochanie, with one of Eva's illustrations. The book is available from the publisher, Black Moss Press.

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2022 ENVOY-121 EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

DESTINATION

By Miriam Estrella Vera Delgado It is not heaven nor hell where I am I float impenitent in a limbo Where in anguish I await my final Destination I beg the Lord to place me on a new road I pray to him in desperation...

I need a future, no matter how long I will never lose hope so I smile and Pretend Clinging to faith until my last day...

My story needs a happy ending!

By Chris Lord

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2022 ENVOY-121 EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

By Richard M. Grove

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2022 ENVOY-121 EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

By Richard M. Grove

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2022 ENVOY-121 EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

Viento

By Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández Viento... viento veleidoso!

Tan pronto arrulla apacible como ruge enfurecido. Él sabe hacerse brisa para acariciar sensual y volverse huracán para azotar despiadado.

Hoy, viento caprichoso, he seguido tu ruta, lejos de la prosa asfáltica de mi leprosa calle.

Te he visto peinar primoroso el cabello azabache de esta niña que contempla celosa los rizos dorados de una mar que se bebe todo el sol deslumbrante de una alborada azul.

Y te he visto embrujar a esa pequeña enmarañando alocado su luenga cabellera.

Te he visto cosquilleando juguetón al heno del terruño y a las hojas de los álamos que sombrean ufanos la mansión carcomida del guajiro curtido.

Pero también te he visto asolar furibundo cuanto encuentras al paso.

Viento amigo o viento hostil, cuál es el que va a soplar en mi vida azarosa?

Será el que favorable empuje

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2022 ENVOY-121 EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

mi débil barquichuelo hacia el puerto soñado?

O será el que huracanado lo haga zozobrar?

Viento... viento veleidoso!

Wind

By Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández

Wind… fickle wind!

It either coos gently or roars enraged.

It knows how to be a breeze to caress sensually and how to become a hurricane to lash out ruthlessly .

Today, whimsical wind, I have followed your course, far from the channeled prose of my banal street.

I have seen you gracefully comb the jet black hair of this girl who jealously beholds the golden locks of an ocean that drinks the sun’s dazzle in a blue dawn.

And I have seen you beguile that little one crazily tangling up her long hair.

I have seen you playfully tickle the soil´s fodder and the poplar leaves complacently casting a shade over the bronzed farmer´s decaying home.

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2022 ENVOY-121 EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

ragingly ravish anything standing on your path.

Friendly wind or hostile wind, which will blow into my turbulent life?

Will it be the one auspiciously pushing my feeble little boat to the longed-for port?

Or will it be the tempest-driven one making my boat flounder?

Wind… fickle wind!

By Chris Lord

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2022 ENVOY-121 EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández, CCLA Ambassador as editor Miguel Ángel Olivé Iglesias, Cuban President as Assistant editor Adonay Pérez Luengo, Cuban vp as reviewing editor Lisa Makarchuk, Canadian vp as reviewing editor Miriam Estrella Vera Delgado, CCLA Cuban poet laureate as reviewing editor Wency Rosales, Cuban photography curator

Editor´s emails: joyph@nauta.cu joyphccla@gmail.com jorgealbertoph@infomed.sld.cu

FROM THE EDITOR: IN OUR UPCOMING ISSUES, WE WOULD LIKE SUBMISSIONS FROM EVERY CCLA MEMBER SO THAT YOU RECEIVE SOME DESERVED PUBLICITY WHILE WE ARE NURTURED BY YOU. BOOK LAUNCHES? POETRY EVENTS? LET US KNOW ABOUT THEM AND WE WILL PRINT UP THE INFORMATION IN THE ENVOY.

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