El Rincón

Carved in Stone 70 & 71

Carved in Stone
70

Where can I survive
in this harsh world
where poetry and ideas
struggle to be free,
a world in which
the great literary myths
have been destroyed?

Where mass media rules,
sensationalizes, lies,
falsifies the power and glory
of words, now used
not to delight and educate,
but to manipulate.

A treacherous world
in which an evil genius rules
and constantly misleads us.

71

An Age, not of Enlightenment,
but of Endarkenment,
this is not the world
in which I want to live.

My chosen world
is that quiet corner,
outside El Rincón
in the Plaza Zurraquín,
by the Mercado Chico,
in Ávila, Spain,
where leaves and confetti
dance to the wind’s tune.

A world of mystery and dream,
personal perhaps,
but well known to
all of those dreamers
who have the eyes to see
and the heart to stand still
and listen.

Commentary:

“There is no earth, no heaven, no extended body, no magnitude, no place and that nonetheless I perceive these things and they seem good to me. And this is the most harrowing possibility of all, that our world is commanded by a deity who deceives humanity and we cannot avoid being misled for there may be systematic deception and then all is lost. And even the most reliable information is dubious, for we may be faced with an evil genius who is deceiving us and then there can be no reassurance in the foundations of our knowledge.” René Descartes (1596-1650).

Cervantes wrote about such times in Don Quixote. Do we see what others see? What is truth and what is fiction? How do we approach and understand authority? What do we believe and why do we believe? Are they windmills or giants, wineskins or warriors, a flock of sheep or an invading army? “Only believe, and thou shalt see” – but what do we believe and why do we believe. “The fault, dear Brutus, lies in ourselves, not in the stars, that we are underlings,” Shakespeare, from one of his many plays.

Carved in Stone 18

18

Day-dreams, cloud castles,
châteaux en Espagne.

I climb the castle tower
in Segovia, and watch
Golden Eagles flying
in the air below me.

I walk the walls in Avila,
feel the stonework, warm in the sun,
and sense the passing of time
as it slowly gathers,
like clouds in the air
when they foretell a storm.

I trace masonic signatures
on the cathedral’s central façade,
and marvel at the master carvers,
who shaped the statues.


 
They also created angels
and the praying pay-masters
condemned to kneel there,
seeking forgiveness for their sins,
as flickering candles mark time.

Commentary:

Avila: 3.8 kilometres of walls. 9 entrances. Inside the walls, the old city. I lived for three summers in El Rincon, a Hostal in the city centre just outside the Mercado Chico. I still dream of walking those city streets, visiting the bars each with its different customs and tapas. And I remember the tapas, each bar specializing in something different. The Rincon, a marisqueria, and I learned so much abut sea-food, its transportation, the ways of preparing and cooking it.

And while in Segovia, you look down at the Golden Eagles, in Avila, an eternity of storks looks down at you. I remember my friend, standing at the door of the Hostal and calling the storks, as they returned from a day in the fields, by the names of the churches in whose towers they built their nests.

I never thought those days would end, but end they did. As all things do. Now I must take a delight in the memories as they walk before me and call me by my name.

Carved in Stone 1

My very own hand-carved verraco
Del Rincon (Avila) a Roger

Carved in Stone

1

Behold me here,
filled with a sort of shallow,
hollowed-out wisdom
accumulated over decades
while listening with my eyes
to the words and thoughts
of writers, long-dead.

Imprisoned in book pages,
do they bang their heads
against walls that bind,
or hammer with their fists
at the barred lines
of their printed cages?

These spirits long to break free,
but they choke on library dust
and pollen from verbal flowers
that bloom unseen.

Those old ones avoided
the traps of temporal power,
or, once trapped,
gnawed off a precious limb
to limp into freedom

Commentary:

Carved in Stone is the second dialog (Chronotopos II) in my Bakhtinian Dialogs with my time and my place. Clepsydra is the first Dialog. You can follow it, in its entirety, starting with this first, introductory post.

Reception Theory – I write, you read. Any meaning that you extract from my poetry will depend on your own culture and background. Tolle, Lege – Take and read. Read slowly, and with care.

I am a poet, a dreamer, if you will. These are my dreams. Tread softly on my dreams, for when you enter my world, you mingle your dreams with mine. The result, I hope, will be an interesting intellectual blend of new creativity.

The hand-carved verraco, in the photo above, was given me by my friends in the Rincon (Avila) where I spent four happy and creative summers. Never forgotten. Blessings and pax amorque.

Time

Spotify:
Remember to scroll down to the appropriate audio episode.

Time
A Theory of the Absurd

I wonder what I’m doing here, so far from home, sitting
at the bar, with my beer before me, my face distorted
in half a dozen fairground mirrors, surrounded by
people half my age, or less, all smoking, cursing, using
foreign forms of meta-language, gestures I no longer recall:
the single finger on the nose, two fingers on the forehead,
the back of the hand rammed against the chin with a sort
of snort of disapproval. It’s way beyond my bedtime, yet
I am held here, captured, body and soul, by foreign rhythms,
unreal expectations of a daily ritual that runs on unbroken
cycles of time: morning brandy, pre-lunch wine and tapas,
home for the mid-day meal, a brief siesta, back to the café
for a post-prandial raising of spirits, more blanco, then back
to work at four and struggle on until seven or eight when
the bar routine begins again with pre-supper tapas and tinto.
Time, comprehended in this new life-cycle, lacks meaning.
Time, in a cycle I have long abandoned, is absurd as well.

Metalanguage

Avila 2007a 157.jpg

Metalanguage I

I wonder what I’m doing here, so far from home, sitting
at the bar, with my beer before me, my face distorted
in half a dozen esperpentic mirrors, surrounded by
people half my age, or less, all smoking, cursing, using
foreign forms of meta-language, gestures I no longer recall:
the single finger on the nose, two fingers on the forehead,
the back of the hand rammed against the chin with a sort
of snort of disapproval. It’s way beyond my bedtime; yet
I am held here, captured, body and soul, by foreign rhythms,
unreal expectations of a daily ritual that runs on unbroken
cycles of time: morning coffee, pre-lunch wine and tapas,
home for the mid-day meal, a brief siesta, back to the café
for a post-prandial raising of spirits, more coffee, then back
to work at four and struggle on until seven or eight when
the bar routine begins again with pre-supper tapas and wine.
Time, divorced from this cycle now lacks meaning.
Time within this cycle is meaningless too.

El Rincón
03 VIII 2005

Metalanguage II

I wonder what I’m doing here,
so far from home,
sitting at the bar, my beer before me,
my face distorted in half a dozen
fairground mirrors,
surrounded by people half my age,
or less, all smoking, cursing,
using foreign forms of meta-language,
gestures I no longer recall:
the single finger on the nose,
two fingers on the forehead,
the back of the hand rammed against the chin
with a sort of snort of disapproval.

It’s way beyond my bedtime;
yet I am held here,
captured, body and soul,
by foreign rhythms,
unreal expectations of a daily ritual
that runs on unbroken cycles of time:
morning coffee,
pre-lunch wine and tapas,
home for the mid-day meal,
a brief siesta,
back to the café for a post-prandial
raising of spirits,
more coffee,
then back to work at four
and I struggle on until seven or eight
when the bar routine begins again
with pre-supper tapas and wine.

Time,
divorced from this cycle
now lacks meaning.

Time
within this cycle
is meaningless too.

Idlewood
24 IX 2016