A contemporary garden, that of the Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, is the place that gives meaning to these poems that go beyond. They are a defense of friendship, of simplicity, of culture as a way of being in the world ... How much of all this is in danger today? Peligra everything, starting with the gardens. Not the Gulbenkian, fortunately, it is a jewel of contemporary art. But I have dedicated in the book a poem to a small pine forest in the center of Salamanca, and I have to start moving because they just told me that I could be threatened. Culture as a way of being in the world is exactly the classic model: beauty and utility, aesthetics and ethics. As for friendship, its name has deteriorated, starting with the inflation of friends who have brought social networks. How many people could repeat today a beautiful phrase of Marguerite Yourcenar: "God has loved me through my friends"? And it may be necessary to translate that, but we all understand what he meant. If poetry is also a form of resistance, what is it against? The poet Saint-John Perse, Nobel Prize for Literature, wrote that he wanted to oppose "the blackmail of the time. " He said it in a letter to his friend and patron Calouste Gulbenkian. That was more than half a century ago. Blackmails change as times change, but the resistance must be the same. I think it serves to shape in each of us a personality with enough criteria to not give in to the easy. What was already a mass culture then has been exacerbated in the electronic variant. The current masses are much more disturbing. In a poem I asked for a monument for those who stubbornly oppose fashion. Poetry is so that we do not move like a school of fish (which is at least very beautiful) or like a crazy hornet (which is what I think we are lately). How does this strange present, rough on so many occasions? . I have a feeling that things that I am not prepared for are happening or will happen. I would like the hatred of social life to disappear. Good and evil affect us all, even physically. The serene to the furious, which is the ideal of classical poetics, has more validity than ever. We are surrounded by furious. And furious in Latin means crazy. On the other hand, poetry preserves the vocabulary of love for all, it is a kind of protected park, at least for the intimate. I do not rule out that one day love will return to social life. What writing drives you? I write so little, practically nothing, that I do not know if I am entitled to respond to this. And when I write, I actually almost transcribe what I hear, as if writing down what I dreamed. Then I work on that, I remove, I forget. But when I write a poem that says what I wanted to say ("say what has already been said", according to Horacio), then I feel an incomparable happiness that makes me want to live. What does it relieve or protect him? It protects us, it heals us, it saves us. This is something we know anciently, but today we must remember our fellow citizens. The mere repetition of some beautiful words protects us from evil, starting with some people who complicate our lives and ending with death itself. Language saves us from all that. How far must the word compromise come? Poetry has an inevitable ethical side, which includes other sides such as politics, but not in the sense that we almost always hear. Even those who play with language should know that they play with fire. Not because they are going to burn, but because they burn others. For someone who understands poetry as a destination (I count myself among them), poetry has priority. I want to say that for me it is the first thing in the order of language, in what I have to say. I would like politicians to repeat the slogans of poets (for example Carpe diem , or beatus ille ) and not the opposite. With the impoverished political language today, it would be very sad for poetic language to submit to it. I certainly go for free, like those students who examine themselves for free and have to prepare more. Sometimes I think what it will be like to have a group, a party, a community of any kind, because it must be very relaxing to feel protected by an organization that also tells you what to say, but it is not my thing. In return I have a few amazing people who are by my side. You can't have everything. Harmony with the world is also part of these poems, as it was from your book 'Confident'. Is that a way to take sides? Yes. First it is a truth, a very simple yearning, which I think is shared by many more than it seems. To be confident is to stand up to current cynicism, which has undermined everything, language comes first and then full social life. It is not a world leak . Harmony is a fortress in the face of turbulence. Is it a poet at street level? Yes and no, in the extremes. I lead a completely normal life. I go by bus to a neighborhood gym, I have very basic colleagues, as I am. I had to change my gym because in the center one they were talking about Plato once. I also live very retired. The two things in a very extreme way, without average. It is up to the artists (let's not forget that the poet is more an artist than a writer, if we can clarify a lot) live the contradictions. In the language I am very interested in the noble language of the classical Western tradition but I am as interested in what the real people, the people, of which I am a part, speak. What I would not like is to be an intellectual middle class person, those who repeat slogans. Street and aristocratic, yes, I mean language. And to what is not language too. Poetry is a call to the essential, he says. Even more in a crazy time where politics and the economy invade everything? A few years ago at Villa Yourcenar a friend, the Belgian novelist Alain Bertrand told me: "Look, since they don't believe in anything, they only talk about politics." Naturally, he talked about all Westerners. Well, the Spaniards have come to that, aggravated by the economy. We do not believe in anything. We have the worst of capitalism and communism together: a materialism without a trace of spirituality. It is possible that it will be considered in bad taste to talk about politics again, if we continue like this. Especially with people so little empathic that they do not think that others may not agree with them. Poetry from Virgil and Horace is language that develops empathy. It is the Roman pietas , which is not exactly mercy, but empathy, humanity. Anyway I would settle for politicized and dogmatic people to have a little empathy, at least with me. I miss in the current literature the humanistic project. Something that makes me suffer at this time are the artificial neo-languages, which hide ignorance and sustain the double standards. One day the names of things will return. "I am a man in deep disagreement with his time," he writes in the poem 'What Matters' ... Is it the same? I'm still the same. Or better, because I'm almost free. Literature frees us from many easements. When we read Safo we are an archaic Greek woman in love, directly. Literature frees us from our age, from our sex, from our language (language can become a maddening jail, we see it in nationalists). Well, it also frees us from our time. Why am I going to have to live subject to the time I was born? After reading Don Quixote, I can allow myself to dream, to be, to take off a little or totally. Today diversity is penalized vehemently, open thinking, contrary opinion, generating a blackmail of unique truths. Do you feel conditioned in this regard? Yes. In classical Athens, they not only needed to have contrary opinions, but they even liked it, because without them there is no democracy, no science, no philosophy. I did my doctoral thesis on the gender of dialogue, which is the great Greek contribution in the shared search for truth. Our era is monologues, and I do not mean those of humor. Something very important, moreover, is knowing that in each of us there are opposite opinions, being prepared to change our mind. They become very heavy, boring, people who have already arrived, who do not change or who do not glimpse the possibility of changing. Insults and threats against each other are now redoubled ... Going through this world insulting and threatening others is something very painful, also thinking that we only live once. It is incredible that more and more people are seduced by that. I love educated people, courtesy, that term that in Spain has almost been lost due to disuse: kindness. I love that. I met the most educated man in Spain. That made up for all this other. Another day we talked about that. Intimacy is another of the battered spaces ... The most precious treasure of civilization, intimacy, has been lost, except those who care for it as a heroic adventure. It was a treasure that didn't cost money. There I dare to defend poetry as a language of intimacy. There is a couplet by Manuel Machado that says something similar to this: What a great taste / that the little things that you and I know / nobody knows. You grew up in democracy, how do you contemplate that evolution in Spain? A good thing that The ancient Greeks had that they posed good systems of government and also bad systems, which were the corruption of the good. The good ones were monarchy, aristocracy and democracy. In today's Spain, which has conditions to be a combination of the three good ones, as the Romans wanted, I notice that democracy begins to resemble demagogy. And I notice that freedom shrinks rapidly. On the other hand, at the time of the Transition, the politicians seemed admirable to me. The other day I met in person one of those whom I admire, Manuel Núñez Encabo, who now chairs the Antonio Machado Foundation. I saw in him a representative of democracy, of the classical left, of reason illustrated, of the Machadian bonhomy. The same could be said of almost the entire parliamentary arch of that time. I could give examples of right and of course center, equally admirable. And independent. I like, by the way, people who go as independents in the lists of a match. And I greatly appreciate the elegance in the forms. We have run out of references in so many cases, hence some confusion? We have run out of teachers. We cannot rest in them. First we said that teachers had to gain authority every day (!). Then we deconstruct everything. We suppress the classics. One good thing about the university world is that teachers still recognize having teachers. For example, a few days ago I was having coffee with my teacher, Carmen Codoñer, who is an emeritus professor, the first female Latin professor in Spain. I like to ask for advice, listen to his teachings, I listen to what he tells me. It has auctoritas , which is the noblest form of power, because it imposes nothing. A generation of young people without teachers is dangerous and exposed to many sufferings. Adults who do not provide teachers have a great responsibility, which will one day be demanded of us. It is our failure. We have the worst of the revolution of '68 and we have nothing left of the best (spontaneity, closeness to nature, sexual freedom). What are you most esteemed? What is already being fulfilled in me My teachers said: that over the years Horacio would influence me more and more. The acceptance of limits, the search for serene happiness, the rejection of dogmatisms ... Pablo García Baena has been my teacher in poetry, was always there. Álvaro Pombo is another, creator of a complete literature, poetry and novel. In poetry, the newest: Colinas, Carnero, Siles, Villena ... What worries you? We would need another interview for everything you would have to list.What excites you? Lots of things every day, in fact they outweigh the concerns, That's why I'm still alive. Love, tenderness, simplicity, the proximity of animals and plants, people with grace (I mean the unique charm that makes something like the divine sparkle in them), laughing people, kindness also me he falls in love. What verse accompanies you with more insistence? I've been thinking for a while. It is not just a verse, but most likely something from Juan Gil Albert: " I want to believe that the world is full / of a divine and mysterious project / of a project that will never be written / on any wall. Believe that it is true / that every which owns itself / as a shady and thoughtful unit . 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