The village bus station looks quiet in the photo. Not so the journey into Madrid this morning.
En el autobús,
las viejas cotillean;
sólo los hombres casados
pueden dormir.
Roughly translated:
On the bus
old biddies gossip;
only married men
can sleep.
I swear you could tell which guys were used to nagging wives: they simply closed their eyes and nodded off as if the screeching voices were a lullaby.
Continue reading “poetry on the bus”
First of all a picture of a spray of lilac. Because it’s April and it’s about time there were lilacs.
And now some talk of poetry. Because it’s April and even if I’m not managing a poem a day, I am trying to focus a bit more than I sometimes do.
I posted a ‘found poem’ in Spanish a few days ago (yesterday’s poem) along with an unsatisfactory translation into English. In fact the bus station notice about ‘security recommendations’ that the text was taken from used to be much longer and much more detailed. It had caught my attention in the past and I found an old copy of the complete version in my notebook.
This time I have taken more liberties with the ‘translation’, although none of the ideas in the poem are entirely mine: they all come from the Spanish original.
Continue reading “half found”
I was thinking about poetry yesterday, even if I didn’t manage to find time to write anything on the blog about it. Indeed, I found something very like a poem at the bus station in Madrid – far busier on the Monday before Easter than the quiet small-town bus station in the photo.
I’m not sure if the concept of ‘found poem’ exists in Spanish, but if it does, I think this must count as one (line breaks have been tweaked, but the wording is as found):
Continue reading “yesterday’s poem”
I had to make a quick visit to Madrid yesterday to sign some papers, but fled back to the village as quickly as I could. A considerable amount of the time I was in the city was actually spent travelling on the metro.
This poem dates from at least six years ago, but I remembered it as the air-conditioning on the metro doesn’t seem to have improved at all.
Fat Woman on the Metro
Her fan is silk and lace – a butterfly
whose coloured wings flick
and furl coquettishly. Crimplene
caresses curves as tenderly
as any lover’s hand; she wears pearls
of sweat at wrist and neck.
More thoughts and words on buses. Starting with my own:
Estación de autobuses
The bus belches, wheezes, shifts
on its haunches and sighs: tired
of waiting for the passengers. They
kick their heels, scuff gravel, grind
cigarette stubs into the ground: tired
of waiting for the bus. The driver
toma su café; se toma
su tiempo.
But, as Flanders and Swann sang, “We like to drive in conveys, we’re most gregarious,” so to make this a proper omnibus edition it seems appropriate to add a few more links.
Continue reading “omnibus edition”
don't confuse the narrator 