domingo, 31 de julio de 2011

International Festival

   We have been celebrating the Festival of Poetry in Tarazona, Novallas, Litago and Vera de Moncayo. It is an international festival where poets from all over the world come to Veruela Monastery and read their poems. It has had many good and touching moments. We have honored the Spanish poet Gabriel Celaya, born in 1911. He would surely have smiled these days if he had been here.
 

miércoles, 27 de julio de 2011

PENTAGRAM OF SILENCE

A note of forgetfulness.
Blue sea on the sky.
Blue hopes.
Music beyond the time
and in the air
a blue symphony of silence.
  (Unpublished, from "The trip of souls",  a book about paintings by Francisco García Torcal)

lunes, 25 de julio de 2011

LEARN TO SAY "NO"

   There are difficult things. Hard things to do. But if you don´t learn to do them, your life can get worse. For instance: say "no" and many friends will go out of your life. Say "no" and somebody who loves you can get hurt easily. And they will leave you just for a simple word. But if you say "yes" and do what they want you to, you will get unhappy. Be yourself anyway!! If you don´t want to do something you don´t like, say "no". It´s easy: NO!!

domingo, 24 de julio de 2011

IF ONE DAY...

... you lost your smile, come here. I will have thousands and thousands of smiles for you. If you feel that your happiness has flown, I will give you all my stars. They will light your soul. Come back here. Just come back home. And I will always waiting for you.

viernes, 22 de julio de 2011

Silence in Oslo

I look at the picture displayed on a digital newspaper, referring to the bombing of Oslo. I see a man pulling the arm of a woman, apparently hurt, the fear in her eyes. I imagine the scene in slow motion, the rush to leave, stupor...And after the chaos the infinite silence all over the world.

jueves, 21 de julio de 2011

I WOULD LIKE TO TELL YOU (a poem by Luis Andrés)

   I would like to tell you sweetly now
that my hand is a friend and the desire is aslept,
that the thread of my voice just touches you.

I would like to tell you that I love you slwoly
with a small love, made of light of rain,
blue smiles, kisses on the forehead,
of strokes without touching, of sincere fondness.

I would like to tell you that my hearts hurts
as a poem written in the water,
taken as a fallen leaf in the stream.

And you know it is true, sincere, what I say.
-Oh, heart of rose, my heart of rose-
and I love you always, even death.

   (From "Poems for Clara" by Luis Andrés)

miércoles, 20 de julio de 2011

Light for your life

You say: “you have to seek the Sun, the outright light, the great, the absolute light, which illuminates the way of your life”. And I answer: “what is wrong with the stars?” I like to count them at night. I like watching the starring sky. You talk to me about the Sun. And I recount the stars in the bottom of the coffer of my soul.

martes, 19 de julio de 2011

Cooking for a friend

   I love cooking. There is something magical in kitchens. As if all the people who have cooked for their families and for themselves were accompaigned us. My kitchen has always been my mother´s kingdom. But it wasn´t anymore in her last years. It was me who did it.
  Today I have cooked some croquettes. My mother would have been proud of me. It has been a surprise for my best friend. When she has gone out of work, I was waiting for her with an enormous lunchbox full of croquettes. She got happy. I am still smiling.

lunes, 18 de julio de 2011

The angel of childhood takes my hand

The starving dogs bark at the Moon,
a faraway cricket sings
the song of the summer.
The Moon rolls, foreign,
in silent slowness.

Facing the stars,
combining emptiness,
the world smiles at me
with his cadaverous face.
All the black cats,
those of their eyes on fire,
look at me with their immobile smile.
The lights of another village
Are blinking fearfully,
The stars promise
New magical spells
And a faraway invisible hand
is crossing herself.
I recover ancient myths of childhood
My hair grows past my neck.
Rectilinear, my hips get longer and smooth.
The curves of my breasts are gently erased.
My skin softens.
The road widens
And an invisible hand
settles on my forehead.

  (From "Cemetery of sparrows)

sábado, 16 de julio de 2011

The angel of silence

   It´s three o´clock in the morning and everything is calm. I love this time of night when everything is quiet. As if an angel had deployed his wings over the world and have touched our forehead with his fingers of clouds to make us sleep. I´ll be good. So, I will close my eyes right now. Good night, World.

viernes, 15 de julio de 2011

IF I SINK TONIGHT

It will not be because the sea was not in calmness,
Not because the winds were weaving storms
in the sails of my ship aground on reefs.


If I sink tonight,
I will have nothing to say about all this.
There is a long endless silence,
 An incredible peace in my windows
 And an absence of you that nobody knows.
    (From "Perhaps the light")

jueves, 14 de julio de 2011

Captain Thunder

  Kites wake up on your temples
And you write to yourself with school letter.
With almost thirty years in your sleeve
you read again your book of dreams.

You lost your calligraphic skill,
the lie gave to you its blow of cane,
your ideals face to the wall.

Recite your lesson, Captain Thunder,
Rider on a rocking horse:
Sigrid divorced your past,
Crispín got lost in the way,
Goliath lives in exile under the ground.

You started the war of work,
Nude of protective armor,
riding, winner, on the sidewalks.

The adventure wakes up from time to time
And you put to sea,
Sail bodies.
You walk on the beaches of the doubt,
and hang your shirt on the clothes hanger.
On the distant comet of the ant.

   (From "Cemetery of sparrows")

miércoles, 13 de julio de 2011

Laziness

    I get up and do not feel like getting up, although I'm on vacation and I can have my time as I want. But I do not want to get up. Today I have laziness in the soul and do not know how it is possible to arrange this. I have laziness of drawing my smile to peek  into the world. I have laziness of living and of living through myself.

I have laziness of writing, though I have firmly proposed to close half a chapter throughout the day. I have laziness of reading and the book stretches itself on the bedside table, looks at me and asks me if we are angered, because I give him the back. I have laziness of having nostalgias for breakfast, because I do not still have sugar to sweeten the sadness.

Too lazy to open memories and pictures, to look at the eyes of the woman I was and not knowing who I am now, right now. I have laziness of sewing my dreams and my hope. Laziness of preparing some coffee and clear the cobwebs of my mind.
I do not like to draw my smile. So, if we are going to meet each other in the street, I warn you: this lady who does not smile, this slept lady with her eyes almost sad… she is not me. I still have not woken up this morning.

martes, 12 de julio de 2011

LETTER TO PATRICIA (my teacher´s daughter)

   Nothing I can say now is going to heal your pain. All the mothers are unique and special for their children, and for that reason, they are unforgettable. With their strengths and weakness, with their lights and shadows, with their moments of love and moments of tenderness. Each mother has knitted scarves of stars to shelter our souls before let us go to school. Everyone has prepared sandwiches of courage and has gotten them into our schoolbags of fears. Everyone has recited magical spells against the monsters of our nightmares, has caught our hands in a storm of coughs and sneezes.
Every mother, Patricia, has sewn our broken wings after a fight with our best friends, has found a solution to a math problem, solved a complicated enigma (does he love me, doesn´t he love me?) that kept awake.
 Every mother has has put a glass of warm milk on the table, dried up millions of tears. And she has darned, unhurried, large holes in our hearts. That´s all what you know about yours.
   But let me tell you a bit about the lady who shared your whole life and spent many years in mine. Conchita Gimeno, my teacher.    That is, My Teacher, in large print, emphatic capital letters. Because you know, Patricia? I have been fortunate to have three wonderful teachers in my life: Pilar Cañete, Julita Díaz and Conchita Gimeno.  I loved all of them very much, all I still love them a lot. And I feel  great love, great respect and immense gratitude for the three. I always remember your mother´s encouraging smile, her contagious joy.
As I wrote a few years ago, she was sweet and good to us, but firm and serious at the same time. She had that rare patience that makes us more bearable our failures. The patience to explain the things without altering, even when we had got confused of the development of the class.
   Thanks to your mother, Patricia, I learned to enjoy the simple things, to value the small details, to smile through my tears, to thank life for every second of happiness. I learned to be juster and more humane. It also learned to add flowers and embroidery dreams, to try to put myself in someone else's place when I feel hurt, to celebrate the big and small achievements of my friends as much as my own.
  I also received a wonderful, a rare and precious gift from her. She gave me an island full of treasures that no one has ever been able to steal me. An island where I can shelter my fear and sadness, my laughter and my joy, my light and my hope.An island where fairies and elves still inhabit, where there are princes and princesses who sleep, and wake up after a hundred years, an island full of stories that sound with her voice and the voice of many of my old teachers. She gave me the passion for reading. I would need  thousands of lives to live thousands of books. So my teacher was. Your mother, Patricia."She loved you very much," you say hugging me, before entering the church. "So I did - I reply-. She was very special. " All the mothers are like this to their children. But yours was not only special for you. She will always be unique and special for all who were fortunate to have her as a teacher. For all those who were her students.
    
Nothing I can say now is going to heal your pain, I know. But I needed to try to wrap up your soul and put you a strip of affection. As she always did with us when we were children.
As she has always done with the adults we are now.
   
You are not alone, Patricia. You'll never be alone, believe me. One day you'll realize that those who we loved and loved us, are still here. They are always with us, because they never go completely. It is because hey are anchored in our hearts. The most beautiful thing we can do for them is to remember them with love, serenity and tenderness.
I know  you will do it.
   
Take care, Patricia. She is looking at you. So, take care as much as she'd take care of you.
All for her smile her sweet smile, eternally.
   
A big hug,
   Blanca

lunes, 11 de julio de 2011

PEACE

Peace is a girl by the fire,
Head on knees,
Under the gentle hand of an old lady
closing the girl´s eyes sweetly.

Meanwhile,
The large rubber of silence
Is roundly erasing the capital letters
of Love, Freedom, War…
to leave so only,
so only,
this little peace,
this love,
the freedom of stroke,
if you want to do it.

TOM THUMB

I never confessed to you
That what I told you about David was a lie
And Goliath,
The fearsome giant of my story…
That giants learn to be alone,
They are more vulnerable than children.
There are good giants crying at night
And evil dwarfs who kill sparrows.

   I never told you that I feared you grow
And discover
That there was no one
To hear the stories we invented.

Never told you that we, seniors,
Didn´t want to grow either,
Didn´t want to discover ourself
-half children and half adults-
in other different theatre footlights.

And you were transferring your role as a small boy
And one day, without stones
To return home,
-follow-bent on the sly-
in our street we found you,
around a corner,
around…
                  all.

      (From Cemetery of sparrows)

domingo, 10 de julio de 2011

Bilbileyendo

  I have been with the ladies of Bilbileyendo, our local  book club. We had read "El amor en los tiempos del cólera", a book by Gabriel García Márquez.
  The best of these meetings is the ambiance, the joy of living and the camaraderie among us.
  Evening falls. We discuss about books and life. The wine glass is empty. Our hearts are filled with laughter and words.

A poem by Ramiro Gairín

  Ramiro Gairín is a young Aragonese poet. I am reading his last book these days, "Que caiga el favorito" ("May the favourite fall down"). A book full of wonderful love poems that I recommend reading at any time. They are short as a wink, soft as a sigh, and sweet, very sweet. I love this poem:

 May the favourite fall down,
and that who spends the most money
loses the big games
and the world won´t move an inch

I turn off the news and look at you

and you are like finding survivors
several days after the earthquake.

(Zaragoza, March 2010)

Ramiro Gairín has a blog:
http://haciaotrasaventurasmashermosas.blogspot.com/


I don´t remember

  I do not remember the colour of your eyes.  
I can´t remember your skin, or your eyes.
I can´t remember your laugh, or the way
you have
of speak or shut up.
I can´t remember your hands,
those hands that
slowly, slowly,
sometimes recreate
to draw silences.
I don´t know how you were.
You see? I can´t remember.
All is well then.
Except my memory.

sábado, 9 de julio de 2011

The wizard hat has aged

Time passes and one day we look back. And we realize that we have lost some important little things. Are they still in our lives? Are we still able to believe in magic?
"The lost fairy wand
was mowing our braids
and -the aged magician hat,
the mutilated magic-
we were looking for boxes-coffins
of our ancient tiny shoes,
(buried peter pan
stop
urgent)

The balloon seller did not recognize us,
the confectioner had retired,
the cheerful ice-cream man
and the traveling cinema
never returned..."


    Centuries ago I have not seen traveling cinemas. I loved the traveling cinemas. They used to come to the Old Square of my village. Are there still traveling cinemas?

With the incomplete puzzle

Now I republish my first book, "Cemetery of sparrows". These are some verses from the first poem:
"When we wanted to realize
the old cemetery of sparrows
was not in its place
and the angel of childhood
was crazy
with the incomplete puzzle in his hands".
Time passes and we lose people we love. Missing pieces in the puzzle of our lives. But life goes on. And here we are.

The weaver of words

Welcome you who enjoy reading poetry. You can hear the air and figure out what it says. You can decrypt secret messages in the stars. You know the salty taste of defeat and despite everything, you are still dreaming. You know the songs of the river waters, the music of the words. The verses excite you.  Poetry touches your soul. Welcome if you are just a dreamer.