[update: it's back up! Here's the original link]
When you open yourself up to the Universe, the
Universe provides! With a free summer ahead of me, I have decided to return to
Spain after many years, Barcelona in particular, which I've always wanted to
explore. No plan, no activities, just to stay awhile and see what the city has
to offer. Sunny May, and although Barcelona has a super convenient metro, and
an amazing bike path system, I am content to walk, especially down in the old
section of town, where what would be back alleys in the US are a main streets,
a whole maze of them, filled with people and small shops: Food, music, clothes.
All the signs in Catalàn, a Romance language similar to Spanish, and French, so
that I can understand most of them, but have no idea to how to pronounce the
words. In fact, and I didn't know this before I came, Catalonia (or Catalunya
as the natives call it) used to be its own country for a while, like Texas,
and, also like Texas, they're fiercely proud of themselves their language and
culture. I envy their bilingualness, like having a secret language only cool
people know.
It's my second day here, rambling along La
Rambla, main avenue in the touristy centro section, when I see a green poster
outside of the Palau Virreina advertising the 2011 Barcelona Poetry Festival. A
week of daily free readings and performances at the Palau and other nearby
locations. And it started yesterday! I check the schedule of events, and,
though I'm fine with just seeing what the poets in Spain are up to, some
American poets are reading, including Jerome Rothenberg and...Gary Snyder!
The next night I return to the Palau Virreina,
early, and though I didn't think a poetry reading would attract much people,
I'm wrong. The place fills up, all chairs taken, people standing in back and
even weaseling down the aisles. The building is old old, stone walls
probably older than the United States, but it's been converted into an arts
center, currently displaying some contemporary photography. Two huge wooden
doors open into a high arched hall in the layout of a cross, though the 'top'
of it is closed/walled off and the stage arranged right at the center, so
chairs in the wings are viewing that performance sideways. I suppose this isn't
even a 'hall', since parts of it are open to the sky. A courtyard I guess.
The opening act for Jerome Rothenberg is a South
African “poet/musician” named Kgafela Oa Magogodi. During his
reading/performance he sits with a guitar in his lap, tapping out the rhythm
with his right foot on a tambourine, and occasionally picking up small
percussion instruments like a drum stick or rattle, singing in English and what
I take to be a tribal language from South Africa, but between 'songs' (which at
times are him just talking over a simple vamp) reciting poems in the style of
what some would call 'spoken word', meaning fast and passionate and
occasionally rhyming and on the political side, criticizing both his government
and the United States. I'm all for that, though he seems to be preaching to the
choir, which is, in my humble opinion, the problem with that type of poetry:
it's passionate, but not subtle, nor surprising, nor does it tell me anything
new, or make me think differently about politics, or anything.
I have to say that I'm not that familiar with
Rothenberg, never read his stuff except maybe in anthologies. Magogodi
introduces him as “The Shaman” and he has that air, though all poets have that
air, a little. He looks like an old Jewish Torah scholar, except with short
white hair and beard, his head and neck curving over in the beginning of a
question mark, from a life bent over books, and which is probably what I'll end
up looking like. He's dressed all in black: black slacks, black t-shirt, black
shoes, with a Native American-looking necklace of wood and turquoise. An
assortment of props are already on the podium: a feather, a baton, and what
looks like a long plastic tube.
He addresses us in english, and I wonder how
much the audience understands, and even how much of the audience is
spanish/catalan versus maybe american, and starts by saying he's going to sing
a traditional native Seneca song, in the original language, then in English,
then “for the first time ever, en Catalàn!”
That gets a huge roar, though when he actually
starts singing, the song just consists of the line, “The animals are coming”
repeated a few times while he shakes a rattle and waves a feather. Still, I
think the Senecas would have been proud that one of their songs has been sung
across the ocean in a language just a little bit less in danger of disappearing
than theirs.
Impressing the crowd even more, Rothenberg reads
one of his poems in English, then a Spanish translation of it. Unfortunately he
can't keep that up, and after that reads just in English, and though
interesting to me perhaps, he's losing some folks, they're getting restless,
especially when us English-speakers (and there seem to be more than I would
have thought) chuckle, or go 'huh' after an interesting line. Since Rothenberg
does such a good job of reading his one poem in Spanish, I'd think he could
have, or even should have, talked between poems en español, at least un
poquito, to keep the crowd with him, since they loved how he started out. But,
he also reads a 'tone poem' (as in, just made up of sounds) by a German
dadaist, Hugo Ball, while whirling that plastic tube over his head the whole
time, making a high pitched whine. Which seems to have the same effect on
everyone, as in, Um, what the fuck was that?
He ends with a Navaho song, about how horses
came to their land, which is interesting since the Spanish were the ones who
actually introduced them, but I like the idea of the 'losers' re-writing
history with poetry and song, taking the oppressors out of the story
completely. I'm not sure people get it though. Maybe I'm thinking too much. It's
happened before.
The description in the program says that
Magogodi and Rothenberg will “show a way to listen to poetry that incorporates
ritual and combat in every verse and every gesture” (my translation)(from
Catalàn!) which only goes to show that the Spanish like their descriptions to
be melodramatic, because there is no ritual or combat, nor have the two
performers ever met before the show. What they do have in common is an interest
in mixing/melding languages and cultures together.
The huge wooden doors of the 'palace' have been
kept open for the poetry reading, which I think is meant as an invitation to
any passers-by (and there are many) though throughout there has been a constant
Rambla rumble of people out on a Friday night, and at one point a large group
gathers in the back of the hall and have to be shushed, though they don't
really. I'm not sure if they're people who have just wandered in, or who are
waiting for the Sufis, because in fact they are the headliners tonight:
three people performing Sufi poetry and music. A beautiful red-haired woman
dressed all in white reads the poetry, translated into Catalàn, while the two
men, one of whom also sings beautifully, accompany her, and/or play musical
interludes between poems, with both stringed instruments (guitar, violin, and
some kind of traditional lute or oud) and sometimes on handheld
tambourine-looking drums. Since the poetry is in Catalàn, I tune it out
sometimes and just enjoy the music, but other times I can understand some of
the words. It's all about love. All you need is amor.
Halfway across the world and all I do with my
free time is what I'd do back home: Hang out in a bookstore. The best one, LA
Central, a block off La Rambla, has a huge collection. I seek out the poetry
section, curious about which American poets are the most popular, and (this may
make some people angry, but I love it)(meaning both that I love that it makes
people angry, and love that it's true) it's Charles Bukowski, hands down. There
are eight of his books of poetry, in translation, compared to Sylvia Plath and
Anne Sexton, each with one book. John Ashbury nowhere to be found.
I'm renting a room from a woman while staying
here. Much cheaper than staying in a hostel, and much quieter. I'm going 'old
school' traveler style, enjoying having no phone, no car, no computer, no iPod.
Still, with not even a radio in my room, I do miss music, so that every little
snippet I hear seems like a gift, like when I stop into a smoothie place down
on Calle Ferrán for a slice of pizza, as a halfway cheap lunch (because
Barcelona is expensive) and the Rolling Stones' “Beast of Burden,” is playing.
One of my favorites, haven't heard it in a while. Tired from walking all day,
gazing at all the beautiful Spanish women, the perfect words for what I'm
feeling:
I've
walked for miles, my feet are hurting
All
I want is for you to make love to me
Poetry vs. Music. Two points on a continuum?
Heidegger says all artists help in the creation of the world, but he reserves
top place for the poets, because they create with language, but here on La
Rambla, Saturday afternoon, a percussion troupe appears. Modern day punk rock
Catalàn Kodo drummers, blocking traffic, yelling and pounding and dancing and
lifting their drums in the air. A hundred people surrounding them, dancing with
them down the street.
On Saturday night, when I arrive back at the
hall of the Palau de Virreina. A group of people, volunteers, dressed in
funny-looking, what I take to be traditional Catalunyan, red hats, wait at the
front of the courtyard. One woman, guapa, approaches me and says hola. I try
not to act nervous as she asks me if I'd like to hear a poem. Me encantaría, I
say. I would love to.
She spreads out a set of ten (or so) cards, face
down, and asks me to pick one. On the other side is the name of a poem, and who
it is by, which, alas, I don't really catch, but at least it's in Spanish and
not Catalàn—I may have a chance of understanding it.
She smiles, seemingly pleased by my choice, and
recites it by memory. I understand most of it, I think—it seems to be in a
simple accessible style, a poem about a woman's face. I try to be brave and
look the beautiful woman in the eye, and she stares right back, and when she's
done I want to tell her that she has a face like that, but what if I've
misunderstood? What if the woman's face in the poem is old and wrinkly?
Instead, I play it safe, as I always seem to do with women, and say simply,
Gracias. That's all I can say to beautiful women who recite poetry to me.
Gracias.
The problem with having events in the courtyard
of the Palau de Veillreina becomes evident: Rain. I arrived early, just to get
out of it, but with the open courtyard, half the seats are wet. Hardly above a
drizzle, not unpleasant to walk through, but not to sit in. I grab a metal
folding chair down front, under a second-floor walkway, in the second row. The
first row is just a little out in the open, so the seats are half wet. All the
video recording cables, and half the stage, are out in the rain. Steam rising
from the stage lights. I start to worry about be electrocuted.
A trio of older people sit down next to me, and
the woman right next to me smiles and nods. The hall is filling up, or at least
the dry parts, with a small section of us under the crosswalk, then twenty feet
of empty wet chairs, then a larger group standing in back. The whole time we're
sitting there, through a glass wall to the left there is a room, a classroom
maybe, with chairs and a couple desks up front. I finally ask one of the guys
in charge why we can't all move in there. He claims we wouldn't all fit, though
I'm not so sure. More likely, moving all the recording equipment, sound and
video, would be impossible, so the recording/video of the poetry has become
more important than the poetry itself.
My new neighbor spreads out her umbrella and
puts it over the chair in front of us, because by now the rain has gotten
stronger and raindrops are splattering off the seats and back onto us. I thank
her and mention that things don't seem planned out very well. She nods and says
that it's a matter of organization, and that if a corporation had organized
this, everything would run smoothly. Anarchist that I am, I have to agree with
her. “Sabes,” she says, “Los poetas son idealistas, pero no muy organizados.”
Indeed.
Lining the back of the stage are four
super-comfy-looking chairs about the size of love seats. All black, of course.
And dry. The poets arrive, and man are they young. Two young men, two young
women. I guess I'd expected people like Jerome Rothenberg, wise men, or wise
people, but nope, these look like college kids. I tell this to my neighbor and
she laughs. “We don't have many poets here in Catalunya!”
The four youths ascend and stand in a row at the
front, in the drizzle. Like, for a while. Silent. I think this is a statement
of some sort. My neighbor chuckles. Then, through some unspoken signal, three
of them retreat to their chairs, of which I'm seriously jealous right now.
Two of them, María Cabrera and Jaume C. Pons,
are from Catalunya. The other two, Pablo Fidalgo and María Salgado, from
Madrid. So, half the poems will be in español, and half in catalàn. The guy
from Madrid, and the seeming organizer, Fidalgo, reads first. He's cultivating
his inner Pablo Neruda, both in body weight and poem content, where 'amor'
appears every other line.
I understand most of the Spanish poems, though I
actually prefer the Catalàn poets, they have better stage presence, speak more
intensely. The young catalàn woman is serious, and intense, and I want to marry
her and her sexy rolling r's. Pons, the catalàn guy is the best, even the other
poets seems to acknowledge this. He's the only one who uses humor, which I
like, as well as a couple 'shout outs' to both Keats and Jim Morrison. He even
sings a verse from The Doors' “The End.”
All lusting after beautiful women who write
poetry aside, I feel like I'm in a good tribe that night. A room full of people
who like poetry, and surprisingly a lot of younger folks. I'm not sure what
would happen in the States, though there are plenty of artsy-looking older
folks, including a few other men with long hair, so I don't feel too much like
a freak.
I wonder what writing in Catalàn is like. That
is, everyone here seems to be basically fluent in both Catalàn and Spanish,
therefore these poets seem to be choosing the language they want to write in. I
wonder if they would say that? That it's a choice for them? Because Spanish is
a world language, they could write in it and have people from Santiago to Los
Angeles understand them. But to choose to write in a language spoken by maybe a
million people? Two million? And yet, I would do that too, write in my own
language versus the language of the oppressor. Except I have no choice, the
language of the oppressor is the only one I know.
On Sunday I do get to see a couple of older
Spanish wise men poets: Luis García Montero and Joan Margarit. I arrive at the
Ateneu Barcelonès, where the reading is being held, a little late. In contrast
to the Palau Virreina, this building is new, fancy, a little sterile feeling
even. I walk in and a security guard points me through some doors, where I can
already hear the sound of poetry being recited. I check my watch. Really? It's
not that late. Who ever heard of a poetry reading starting on time?!
I enter the room, a small theatre with rows of
seats, and with a large movie/tv screen, on which the two poets are seated on a
stage somewhere. Not here though. Shit. I almost decide fuck it, that I didn't
come to see a video of poets reading, but on the other hand I have nothing else
planned, so I awkwardly crawl over some people's laps to a lone chair off to
one side. I'm lucky to get that, the salon fills up with people coming in after
me who have to stand in back.
At first I think the poets are reading somewhere
else, Madrid maybe, and we are watching a simulcast of some sorts, but then on
hearing them talk between poems I realize they're actually in the building, in
a larger theatre, and that we're in an overflow room. Wow. How's that for a
poetry crowd? Still, grrr, I want to be in the main hall.
The two poets have a weird dynamic. The younger
one, Garcia, reads one poem seated in his chair. The second, older, poet,
Margarit, stands up and walks to the front of the stage and reads while
gesticulating like an Italian. Montero's poems have humor, and joy, like
Charles Bukowski or Frank O'Hara, while Margarit's poems are harder for me to
understand. I can't tell if it's because he's speaking in Catalàn, or if he
just has a super-thick accent, or both, but they are, or seem, serious, though
he also seems to impress the audience a bit more. Towards the end, Margarit
tells Garcia that he happily sees him as the heir to his throne. Which sounds
horribly arrogant. I know, right? Who would have thought a poet could be arrogant?
But maybe Margarit has earned it.
And now for something completely different. Lee
Ranaldo, guitarist for the band Sonic Youth, is giving a performance back at
the Palau Virreina. I'm not sure what to expect, but since it involves the
guitarist from Sonic Youth, I'm expecting noise. In fact, his performance, or
show, is called “Noise Recitation: Against Refusing.”
This time there's a huge screen at the back of
the courtyard, with a large square stage. A wire has been suspended down in the
middle, with a small noose about head height. Two Fender amps flank the stage,
one in each back corner tilted slightly up, with a small podium stage-right,
where I sit a couple rows back. I show up early and still barely get a chair.
Huge turnout, with a slightly different crowd. All the alternative music crowd,
generally younger, and with more tattoos, has turned out, expecting perhaps
more music than poetry, or a concert instead of a poetry reading. They're
certainly rowdier, especially the women, who all seem wonderfully foul-mouthed,
making me think of these lines:
In
the streets the women come and go
laughing
and yelling, “Coño!”
About ten minutes before the show, Ranaldo comes
up on stage. No one in the audience seems to know if it's really him, or maybe
just a roadie, since he's now like, an older guy. Maybe a little older than me,
meaning late forties, with grey hair, though cut in kind of an old Beatles
British invasion style. He hangs a Fender Jazzmaster electric guitar from the
wire noose, wrapping it around the head and through some of the tuning pegs.
With a wireless unit duct-taped to the body, he turns up the volume knob,
leaving the guitar just hanging there, moving in the wind a little, and since
it's on, and the amps are on, the strings vibrate slightly, creating a low moan
and a really high-pitched, though faint, feedback sound.
The lights lower, and a weird collage movie
projects on the screen: shots of some very skinny young people crawling around
coastal rocks, très 70s. I'm not sure if they are the Sonic Youth folks from
way back or not.
Ranaldo comes up on stage. Again, nobody knows
it's him until he grabs the mic and begins to talk, so there hasn't been any
applause. Or maybe everyone else knows what to expect? And I'm the dummy? It's
happened before. Anyways, he gives a brief explanation of what he's about to
do, in English. He'll be reciting some of his poetry (later I learn that it's
from a new book of his, Against Refusing), but that “half of it won't
make sense.” He doesn't even know what the words mean, so we shouldn't
worry if there's no translation.
He grabs a drumstick, walks over to the guitar,
and starts banging on it. He has some effects pedals on the floor by the podium
that I can't see, but which must include distortion, and some kind of repeater,
and some other weird stuff, because the hall fills with sound. Low notes and
some high notes. Feedback. Clicks of the wood stick on the wood body. He even
hits the strings, getting huge vibrating thick chords.
Holding the mic in one hand, he recites his
first poem, something about traveling by car through California and the desert.
I'm not sure the words would stand on their own. Seems like he could just be
reading from a dictionary with just as much effect. But what an effect! The
movie continues, with more bizarre scenes strung together, of mostly naked
people wearing masks and spitting rubber spiders out of their mouths. Ranaldo
takes a violin bow and strokes the guitar strings, sometimes one, sometimes all
six, stepping on his various effects pedals. In fact, I'd argue he's 'playing'
his pedals as much as his guitar.
Even more bizarrely, Ranaldo pushes the guitar
away, sending it swinging in huge circles around the stage. The noose/wire
stretches, it's black and mostly invisible with the stage lights and movie
playing, creating the effect of the guitar as an animate being, floating around
in space singing/screaming/moaning. A ghost.
Ranaldo recites more poetry, going from more
narrative-ish stories to listing off weird sound-words, reminding me of the
Dada poem Rothenberg read the other night. At one point Ranaldo even takes the
guitar off it's noose and carries it to one of the amplifiers, creating a weird
feedback loop that, combined with the repeat effect, sounds like, and is as
loud as, a helicopter hovering overhead.
I'm actually surprised Ranaldo has a guitar
strap, not sure why, but he does, which he puts on the guitar. Slinging it over
his shoulder, he fingers some chords and single notes. Not a lot, never many
notes at once. Instead, he just seems interested in 'layering' notes and sounds
over each other, in different rhythms (or indifferent rhythms).
He hangs the guitar back up and sends it
swinging around in more huge loops. I, and the guy next to me, keep expecting,
maybe in some way hoping, it will hit the podium, but it never does. Would make
a cool noise though if it did. I love though that at one point the guitar tags
Ranaldo on the back, but I seem to be the only one who laughs out loud. At
another point, he pulls it to the back of the stage, then sends it swooping out
over the heads of the people in the first few rows, again like a live creature.
I started the show (? Or, what do I call this?)
thinking it was either the most pretentious thing I was ever going to see, or
the coolest, and by now I'm thinking it's the coolest. His weirder poetry seems
to fit the mood more, and he uses repetition effectively, especially at one
point when he chants the last line of a poem over and over, “Open all the
boxes! Open all the boxes!” While bringing the noise to it's loudest peak of
the night.
I expect Ranaldo to just leave the guitar
screaming and walk off the stage as his ending, but as the movie ends, he gets
the guitar under control and plays it some more with a violin bow, calming things
down, leaving it hanging with just a low hum. He walks over to the microphone,
smiling, and quietly says, “Thanks.”
Huge applause. The house lights comes on, and
though I can't necessarily hear or understand the exact worlds people around me
are saying to each other, the expressions on their faces say what I'm feeling:
Holy shit. That was the craziest fucking shit I've ever seen or heard.
Gary Snyder has been one of my favorite poets
for years, though I had despaired of ever getting to hear him read, since I've
moved back to Michigan and, well, he's getting old now and I figured he'd want
to retire quietly to his house up in the Northern California mountains. But,
apparently, he has come all the way to Spain for this reading, which takes
place in a small auditorium in the Caja Madrid (a big Spanish bank) building on
the Plaça de Catalunya, a large plaza and park, with a huge fountain and trees
and benches and metro stop, and where the Rambla starts, heading south to the
port. And the spot where, a week later, protesters will set up camp, as part of
a nationwide manifestations against government austerity measures, due to the
crumbling economy, caused, in part, in my opinion, to government deregulation
of banking practices, including those of Caja Madrid.
The arts wing of the building, the Espai
Cultural, houses some contemporary photography exhibits on the ground and
basement floors. In fact, since I arrive super early, I wander downstairs to
look and stumble on Snyder getting interviewed in front of a camera crew. I
can't help it: I smile when I see him. One of my heroes, in person. Someone
whose writing changed my life, really. I try not to gawk though, not wanting to
seem like a dork-stalker-groupie.
The auditorium is on the second floor. I slip in
early, while the techies are still checking the mics. The room is set up weird,
in a large 'V', with the stage at the base, so that the two 'wings' of seats
are separated and not visible to each other, though both can see the stage. I'm
glad I got a good seat right up front, because ten minutes before the reading
is supposed to start, a flood of people come pouring in, scrambling for seats
like jackals.
The first hour of the 'reading' is actually a
showing of the short documentary The Practice of the Wild in which the
writer Jim Harrison, a friend of Snyder's, interviews him in different
settings, including while walking in the woods, interspersed with Snyder
reading some of his poems. I've actually seen this before and, though I'm a fan
of Harrison, he's not the most photogenic person (Snyder later describes him as
looking “like Genghis Khan”) and talks in kind of a mumble-growl. In fact,
since many people in the audience don't seem to know who he is, or maybe they
do, they kind of end up laughing at him. I'm also left feeling that Harrison
doesn't 'dig' as deep as he can with his questions. But I think the audience is
won over by Snyder, the wise man of the woods, talking about Buddhism, and
writing, and his past.
After the movie, the host and interpreter for
the night, Nacho Fernández (love that name!), a writer and translator from
Madrid, gets up and introduces Snyder, though I get the impression that he
needs no introduction to anyone there, Spanish or otherwise. In contrast to
Jerome Rothenberg (they must be around the same age) Snyder is straight-backed,
thin, and wiry, dressed in blue jeans and boots and a shirt right out of an
L.L. Bean catalogue, looking twenty years younger than he actually is, and like
he's about to go for a hike in the mountains. When he first walks up on stage,
he seems tired after his trip of three or so days, but as soon as he starts
reading, he gets more energy.
He and Fernández sit at a long table. Snyder
reads from a small collection of poems, mostly earlier work, that Fernández has
assembled and translated, and which has been handed out for free to all the
attendees, with the English and Spanish versions on facing pages. Since I know
Snyder knows Chinese and Japanese and probably Sanskrit and some Native
American, and has lived in California most of his life, I half expect him to
read some of his poems in Spanish, but he doesn't. Fernández translates
everything Snyder says in between poems, which is a lot, since Snyder likes to
basically tell a story for every poem, and I see some of the Spanish people
next to me kind of following along with the Spanish versions of the poems. I
like following along too, to see how the poems 'work' in Spanish. And they seem
to work well. Though Bukowski would have a heart attack for me saying this, he and
Snyder both have a plain, simple language, no big words or complex phrases.
Snyder tends to let the things he's describing stand for themselves, just
listing objects, letting us readers visualize them. Not a lot of adjectives or
adverbs like I tend to see in Spanish poetry. I wonder if Spanish readers tend
to think of poets like Snyder and Bukowski as too stripped down, too
minimalist. But no, here's Snyder in a packed auditorium. Though, based on the
crowd reaction to some of the funny lines in the movie, and in certain of the
poems, I start to think that maybe 2/3s are American, which makes the size of
the crowd even more surprising. Of the Americans actually in Barcelona right
now, how many would actually come to a poetry reading?
I'm familiar with all the poems, and like I
said, I've seen (and heard) videos of him reading, but hearing the poems in
person has a certain magic. Plus seeing his expression, his wrinkly smile, or
even the moments when some sadness appears, like in poems about his sister, and
Lew Welch.
Interesting note: He reads one of my favorites,
“As for Poets,” but with a revision. Instead of all the described poets being
male, he's changed at least the Water Poet to a female, so that the stanza now
goes:
The
first
Water
Poet
Stayed
down six years.
She
was covered with seaweed.
The
life of her poem
left
millions of tiny
Different
tracks
Criss-crossing
through the mud.
I'm not sure about anybody else in the room, but
his words bring back memories of California and the southwest United States,
making me miss the woods and desert. What am I doing in this big city? But
where else but in a big city could I see a performance like Ranaldo's? Or even
attend a poetry reading by Gary Snyder?
There's a funny poem by Bukowski describing
doing a reading with Snyder, where the Snyder groupies (hey, I'm one, I can say
this) keep asking for an encore, one more poem, and it happens tonight too.
“Otra! Otra! One more!” And I'm like, yeah, ok, let's hear one more. So first
he reads a letter a twelve year old girl wrote to him after going with her mom
to see him read in California, a rhyming poem thanking him. To thank her, he
wrote a rhyming letter back. Cute. Clever. Very unlike what I associate with
Snyder and his poetry, ie humor, but it's a nice light way to end the evening.
After the reading, I consider going up to the
stage to just shake Snyder's hand and tell him thank you, but the jackals are
already descending, and Snyder looks tired again, though still smiling. I just
mentally bow and head out the door.
One lone man sitting in a café, scribbling in a
notebook. A young woman waiting on the corner across from the café. Evening.
She's waiting for poetry. Or for a boyfriend to pick her up on his motorcycle.
Or, no, for another young woman. They wait together for poetry. They type
poetry into their phones. The man would write poetry on their bodies. They
would whisper poetry to him, one in each ear. And then rain. And then two more
young women, all of them now huddling under an umbrella reciting poetry to each
other, and he looks away and they are gone.
Rambla on.
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