She shuddered at the thought, straightened her shoulders and went on with her speech before a foundation in Madrid. She had been invited to host a human rights award ceremony honoring the Group of Four, the celebrated dissidents jailed in Cuba since July 1997 for publishing a critical manifesto titled The Homeland Belongs to Us All.

For Cruz Varela, who now lives and writes in Spain, the ceremony carried the unintentional feeling of a game show. And it would be her poor fellow dissidents, in absentia, who would take that year's consolation prize.

``I don't want to be here four years from now,'' Cruz Varela resolved that day, ``accepting honors for the political prisoners du jour.''

And then the echo grew louder. Across the sea, she detected its source: a 1940s building at 34 Tamarindo St. in the Havana barrio of Santos Suarez. Huddled in the narrow apartment were five men and one woman, waging a 40-day liquid fast, one for each year Castro has been in power.

Cruz Varela didn't know them, but she could trace her own struggle in the sporadic wire reports coming out of Havana. These activists were running great risks, even though their demands are humble: freedom for political prisoners, respect for human rights.

Such phrases, the poet knows, are illegal in Cuba. The six brave souls at 34 Tamarindo could wind up as she did.

``Make her mouth bleed!''

The flashbacks roused her into action. Cruz Varela decided she would join the group in a symbolic, 24-hour fast. On Saturday, she hobbled to the Cuban consulate in Madrid upon crutches. (She recently had foot surgery.) She camped outside the consulate doors, drawing streams of Spaniards who signed a petition exhorting King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia to cancel their pending official visit to Cuba.

The monarchs postponed their trip in a protest over Castro's crackdown on internal opponents. But dissidents like Cruz Varela fear the Spanish government, which pumps increasing amounts of cash into Cuba, eventually will buckle and unwittingly play stooge to Castro's whims.

``That'll be Castro's next international coup -- he'll hand over The Four to the king. Then what? More political prisoners and more reasons for human rights banquets and awards,'' says the poet, who left Havana in 1994, three years after a mob of state security agents dragged her from her home, forced her into the street, beat her, and attempted to make her eat her crumpled writings.

The regime jailed her for two years, tortured her in ways she cannot describe, did its best to silence her. But the torture proved futile. Hers is a voice too powerful to silence because it belongs to something greater than herself. It belongs to an entire freedom-seeking generation, to the waves of Cubans who have endured political prisons, to the loved ones left to fight the government tide.