Poems in Holy Week
With the third poem written, I think that I can claim that
there is a sequence growing along this particular theme. I like the discipline of having to produce a
poem a day I further like the self-imposed necessity of trying to develop a
sense of questioning that I think the Week itself demands.
The latest
poem called Life (there’s a title as
a hostage to fortune!) can be found at http://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es
and I welcome comments on the poem itself and on the developing theme – if
there is one!
Thanks to
Ceri for his comments via email: I found them challenging, encouraging and
stimulating. Who can ask for more? Me.
I both
dread and welcome tomorrow, as I am duty bound to write another poem. At this moment I have no idea about what I
might write – which is exactly the state of worried anticipation that I like!
Sun
I was able to lie out in the sun for a few short
minutes. It was probably longer than
that, but the greed with which I view the sun also means that I worry about
each ‘wasted’ minute that I am not out in it.
I am always trying to gain minutes to hold in reserve against those
‘brightly dull’ days that I find so antagonizing.
It cannot
be gainsaid that we are moving towards summer.
This is an article of faith for me and I echo the fatal words at the end
of Ibsen’s Ghosts, ‘Mother, give me the sun!’ though I hasten to add that I say
them in an altogether happier state of mind than the unfortunate young man in
Scandinavia!
I am, at
present, a sickly pale colour (for me) and I look forward with glee to
increasing my supply of vitamin D!
Logic
This is a week of holiday.
I know that not everyone, or even the majority of the population is able
to down tools and enjoy, but it is an official holiday period. People, as it were, go on holiday. They visit cities, world famous cities, like,
for example Barcelona.
Then, why
is it that the rate for a room just off the Ramblas in the centre of the city
of Barcelona costs less than it has done for the last six months? Where, pray, is the logic in that price?
When, as
far as I could tell, little or nothing was going on to bring people to the
city, the price of the room that I usually have for the opera suddenly shot up
to over sixty euros! Now, it is
twenty-five – including breakfast!
In a
similar way, when I cycled back from my swim (see Poems in Holy Week above) I had to thread my way through a system
of cones which blocked roads to the beach because today, during a week of
holidays when people might thing about coming to the beach, the powers that be
decided to refresh the paint on the road markings. Today?
Why today and not last week, when there were no, for example, holidays
to complicate traffic flow?
And finally
and most crushingly, why do people vote for PP in Spain when it has been shown
that they are demonstrably corrupt and criminal and inept?
Perhaps the
answers to these conundrums are to be found in the fact that mere logic is not
enough and that we need poets to explain the world to the world!
Food, reasonably
priced food!
At long last we have tried the menu del dia in my local
swimming pool restaurant. I am not sure
that Toni has added it to his blog yet, but it will be there in the next few
days. Visit http://catalunyaplacetoeat.blogspot.com.es
as Toni is constantly updating his blog and making it more and more
exhaustive. We still have a long, long
was to go before we eat our way through the restaurants of Castelldefels, but
we are enjoying doing the fieldwork.
We are also
looking forward to the ruta de tapa, when 40 or more restaurants compete to
produce the best tapa in the city. For a
cost of about €3 you get the tapa and a drink of your choice. We will have to plan this eatathon with
military precision if we are to visit all the establishments.
Barcelona
Tomorrow another horrible bus ride to the city to make the
meeting with my fellow members of the Barcelona Poetry Group all the more
pleasant. I must remember to take my
computer with me if I am to keep up my poem-a-day approach to this week.
