Quevedo

Butterflies

Butterflies
Miguel de Unamuno

… butterflies … temporal forms … fluttering …
existing for one sweet day … they perch … spread
their wings … fan us with their beauty … flourish …
catch our attention … then caught by a gust
tear their wings on a thorn … and perish … blink
your eye and they are gone … yet reborn … they
cluster and gather in dusty ditches …
congregate on bees’ balm … smother Black-Eyed
Susan and Cape Daisy … shimmer in shade …
butterflies by day … fireflies by night …
terrestrial stars floating in their forest
firmament … dark tamarack … black oak … bird’s
eye maple … silver birch … impermanence
surrounds us … dances beneath stars … sings with
robins … echoes the owl’s haunting cry …
eternity held briefly in our hands …
then escaping like water or sand … black
words on white paper capturing nothing …
… my dialog … my time … my place … butterflies …

Note: “La poesía da permanencia a las formas temporales del ser / Poetry gives permanence to the temporal forms of the self.” Miguel de Unamuno (1864-1936)

The temporal forms of the self – and so much today is unsettled, changing, insubstantial. I have often wondered how one makes time stop. Is it even possible to do so? Time and tide wait for no man. And why should they? Fray Luis de León – “Con paso silencioso, el cielo vueltas dando, las horas del vivir le va hurtando.” / With silent step, the ever-turning sky, steals away life’s hours. Or Fancisco de Quevedo – “Que sin saber ni cómo, ni adónde, la edad y la salud se hayan huído. Falta la vida, asiste lo vivido, y no hay calamidad que no me ronde.” Without me knowing how or where, age and health have fled. Life is lacking, past life flew by, and there isn’t a calamity that doesn’t hound me.

Ars longa, vis brevis – art endures, life flies by. My translations are freer than usual today, but I too feel like being creative in my own language. So, if we can’t slow time down, what can we do? We can create – poems, paintings, photos. We can read – and translate from one language to another. We can, like butterflies, perch on flowers and enjoy our brief days in the sun. Mindfulness – we can make the most of each moment by living it thoroughly and well. Carpe diem – we can seize each moment of every day and live it to its full measure. And, above all, we can write and read poetry – because, as Unamuno says – Poetry gives permanence to the temporal forms of the self.

On Loneliness

Loneliness

58 What relationships have a positive impact on you?

I think one of my poems answers this question best. I write “one of my poems” but it is really my ‘free’ translation of one of Francisco de Quevedo’s sonnets – Retirado en la paz de estos desiertos. I have changed the poem slightly, but I am sure Don Francisco (1580-1645) will excuse Don Roger’s impoverished effort (2023).

On Loneliness
29 December 2023

Resting in the peace of these small rooms,
with few, but welcome books together,
I live in conversation with my friends,
and listen with my eyes to loving words.

Not always understood, but always there,
they influence and question my affairs,
and with contrasting points of view,
they wake me up, and make me more aware.

The wisdom of these absent friends,
some distant from me just because they’re dead,
lives on and on, thanks to the printed word.

Life flits away, the past can’t be retained.
each hour, once past, is lost and gone,
but with such friends, I’m never left alone.

And there are so many of those literary friends. I still read Rudyard Kipling and I have just finished Kim, Captains Courageous, Stalky and Co., Puck of Pook’s Hill, and Rewards and Fairies. I read these first when I was nine or ten years old, and I return to them regularly. Other friends include Garcilaso de la Vega, Fray Luis de León, St. John of the Cross, Quevedo, Góngora, Calderón, Miguel de Unamuno, Antonio Machado, various members of the Generation of 1898, the majority of the poets from the Generation of 1927… and these are just my Spanish literary friends. I have French friends, English friends, Anglo-Welsh friends, Canadian friends, Mexican friends, and, in translation, many, many more. My relationship with each of these friends has had an impact upon me.

A recent painting, by my friend Moo, is called Fiat Lux – Let There Be Light. It is reminiscent of Dylan Thomas’s poem, Light breaks where no light shines. Intertextuality – Quevedo drew inspiration from the Stoics. I drew inspiration from Quevedo. Moo drew inspiration from Dylan Thomas. The nature of creativity, and its continuing links throughout the ages, shines clearly through these wonderful associations. Long may they continue, and may others enjoy them and be influenced by them as much as I have.

Comment:
The funny thing is that I do not remember writing this blog prompt, nor do I remember having translated Quevedo’s poem into English. I wonder how many other forget-me-nots there are out there. Or, to be more precise, in my books and in my notes. A treasure trove – that’s my guess. Borges wrote of Quevedo that he was more a library than an author, and I am beginning to think that way about my self. A strange world, this, one in which the creator abandons, and then forgets, his creations. Perhaps we should change the image – not so much a library as an orphanage, and so many lost and abandoned orphans wandering around The Little World of Don Rogelio.