- Literature: What do writers write and read in times of the coronavirus?
- Blockade. The Spanish publishing sector is paralyzed: suspends the launch of news
- Crisis. Theaters, cinemas and museums expect to suffer an extra month of quarantine when the state of alarm ends
Nine Spanish poets from different generations face the disturbing reality that Covid-19 imposes on the planet. Poetry is one of the best spaces for meeting and reflection. Also a tool to establish new areas of communication.
Culture has become one of the most fertile territories to endure as a society (and individually) the state of alarm decreed more than 20 days ago by the Government. And the restlessness that this brings along. Poetry is no stranger to what happens, but it also harbors hope. What's more, the best poetry is always an excellent grounding with the immediate .
Felipe Benítez Reyes, Ada Salas, Manuel Vilas, Ana Merino, Lorenzo Oliván, Mariano Peyrou, Joaquín Pérez Azaústre, Marwan and Xaime Martínez are some of the most significant voices on the poetry scene in Spain. Here they display their unpublished verses, to accompany the readers , to walk together looking for corners of light.
MANUEL VILAS: 'THE WAITING'
Now we know that life is eating with a friend on a terrace, going to bookstores, sunbathing, watching a movie in a cinema, getting lost on an unknown street, taking a train.
So when life returns, we will ask for fewer things.
And now I remember full restaurants, weddings, parties, trips by bus, by plane, in the subway.
Nostalgia for the sales of all the shops and markets in Spain, my great country, my poor tortured and humiliated country.
When this is over, I don't think we'll ever give a formal kiss again. All kisses will become powerful, strong, big, sexy and wild kisses.
When life returns, you will see me handsome and elegant, as always.
When she returns, because she will return, she will find me well disposed and on order.
ADA SALAS: 'FOREST'
These
birds
-Now, yes, so sharp-
I hear -your song: that light-
turn
the city
in the middle of a forest.
They hardly say anything
of death
they say:
I am
spring.
I am here again.
I go to your window then
they say:
too
between the horror
purest
the beauty.
MARIANO PEYROU: 'S / T'
we are like the others, but we see some lines running through it all
separating everything
how the ground moves, the memories
stuck, falling or scattered on the ground
things smile and threaten us, mix
the stars and people's faces
you don't feel sad because it doesn't contrast with anything
I once saw the field
I wanted to be alone in the world
full of voices
they have children we
we are our children
we walk on our tracks
and we have no legs
and we are many
walking on just two feet
and we get rid
from listening to all of us inside
ANA MERINO: 'THE SPELL'
This swirling present
of invisible drops,
of tiny poison,
of distant whispers.
Puzzled calendar of repeated days
who intuit the enigma
of the fragility that inhabits us.
What awakens that idea of full thinking,
the yearned for energy,
the solar dream of alchemy,
make up the formula of heaven
and find your answer
in the laboratories
and break this spell.
FELIPE BENÍTEZ REYES: 'ELENFERM O'
Installed in the loneliest purity of pain,
in uncontaminated territory
where nothing but pure pain lives,
like a vanished identity
that has taken the air away,
What does he dream of?
Edges that come together,
spinning lethargic spirals,
an abyss to the abyss ...?
What narrative rules your dream?
In your troubled sleep, what happens?
What is inside each one that belongs to no one?
In this clinical asepsis, in this full moon out of nowhere,
What can you dream when there is only left
the loneliest purity of pain?
LORENZO OLIVÁN: 'THE SKIN IS THE DEEP'
Touch has a memory (John Keats)
Just the heat
melts the properties of the bodies.
And it's also the heat
a subtle form of identity.
The heat of brushing against each other
models, in movements
curved, the self.
What form of vision is on the skin
What is sought in the skin of those whom you love?
The words are turning around:
silence does not inspire,
the center is useless axis
and the inside doesn't work.
Your passion passes alone
for the superficial:
for touching surfaces
throbbing, vibrant and fiery.
Memory has the touch.
The skin - today more than ever - is the deep.
XAIME MARTÍNEZ: 'HORIZON: NEW DAWN'
The road is good
and l'añu enteru ta estáu de snow
and no higher seique
no N! Never no higher! chew nature
conspire against you to keep the sense of shame
and no requexu, almost no higher,
a metal flower makes a poem:
Rellampu
(what you think you will
They are in the plumes of feather dusters from the pampa).
HORIZON: NEW DAWN *
The road, steep,
the whole year is full of snow
maybe at the top
no! Never on top! although nature
conspire against you still retain a sense of modesty
and at a bend, almost at the top,
a metal flower opens a poem:
Flash of lightning
(what you thought faces
they were the feather dusters of the pampa).
* Author's translation
MARWAN: 'A STRANGE UTENSIL'
I'm taking dad to the hospital,
he's having a hard time breathing.
It's 9:35 p.m. on Wednesday, March 25.
The streets are corridors of geriatric.
Fear takes real shape
it fits in my family.
My father is fighting against the air
in a hospital room in the south of Madrid.
My brother is a nurse there,
he will take care of it, we tell ourselves,
looking for luck in misfortune.
But nothing is easy
distress is a rubber band,
fear, a test tube,
I live in one of Goya's very black paintings.
Hope is just a strange utensil
that today I hold in my hands,
time a slow train that does not want to cross the landscape.
I am the child who cries for the pain of man
that he can't hold his father's hand.
The branch is strong, life, a fish going upriver,
dad recovers.
How not to think about them,
where they got hung up
like a jacket in the last conversation
with a relative from whom they could not say goodbye?
Hope is just a strange utensil
which is held in the hands.
JOAQUÍN PÉREZ AZAÚSTRE: 'REPATRIACIÓN'
(Flight Algiers-Madrid, March 31, 2020)
Tell a parent to get on that plane
without looking back.
That the important thing is him, that he thinks of him,
and not in the good and laborious angel
who tried to slide over the garden
of happy hours, with its haze of terror.
Tell the strongest father that nothing is strength
from his always happy voice tell him that he guards it
prevails over the minutes and must decide
come back to life or kill yourself later.
Tell a parent to forget that little hands
today they were able to get on the last flight
and face the battle of daylight hours.
Tell a parent to pray.
And to dream consular words of protection
because there is no time to write your novel
of parental authority.
Tell the father that one day the true eyes
of the men who write their love geography
they will meet again in a distant fire
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
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