hosteller 11-In Spain

                  In Spain

             1.

 

Dear Lau

 In the hostel of Casa Caracol of Cadiz

 I send by email an impromptu verse:

 'Granada'

I see in the desert land of black gravels

Granada, a grand marble statue of abstraction,

and light and shadow of our existential life.

I feel with fear and wonder

in the darkness of a midday

full of deeply black clouds

a light of poetry dawning in mind.

I give my ears with curiosity toward two girls on the street,

one of whom with snow-white teeth diffuses twinkling smiles,

whispering in the other's ears.

But how tragic it is

for the terrestrial beauty of fascination

to be destined to vanish in a moment into nothing

 like morning dews,

like the past kingdom of Granada!

 

Yearning to see the sea,

Gohk

 

 

Cadiz, Mar., 2006

 Hi Lau!

Today I made a long bus trip to Seville via Cordoba.

When I came back to Granada in the evening,

‘Cordova’, a poem of Garcia Lorca's burst on me. Perhaps the image of the triste scenery, kept alive in my mind, of the bare and shrub-covered slopes which I had passed through along toward Cordoba, the old city of the Moors, seemed to present the poem of Garcia For this wanderer:

‘Cordova’

distant and alone,

Black pony , big moon,

olive in my saddlebag.

Through I know these roads,

I'll never reach Cordova.

Through the plains, though wind,

black pony , red moon,

death watching me

from the high towers of Cordova.

……………..

Ay! Death, you will take me,

on the road to Cordova.

…………….

Gohk

Cadiz, Mar., 2006

Dear Lau,

Cadiz is coming closer to me, a Flamenco castle of light, sea sound, and wind on tops of trees.

 Granada was going farther behind, a Flamenco mirage of shadow, silence, and grey glory.

Approaching the entrance to Cadiz  I am excited to imagine seagulls flying over me and the shining silver backs of fish that I was used to in my boyhood.

I was triste at dawn, deep and black, in Granada to see in the dream my mother looking at me in silence and to be reminded of a saying: 'I Taste blood in my mouth when I sing deep song as I pleased.'

At a hostel named Casa Caracol

Madrid, Apr.

Dear Lau

Back again to Madrid, safe and sound. Sangria-drunken I am looking back on my Spain trip.

Madrid will be remembered as a city of rain. It was drizzling the first night when I was going to this city by taxi from the airport, it was drizzling. And now again I am looking outside through windows of the  bus running back to this city at the dark street scene where it is drizzling.

Granada, a grand cave with jewels of flamenco twinkling in would be the past legends of glory Washington Irving loved.

Cadiz by the roaring sound of the sea reminded me of the sea scenery in Moby Dick by Hermann Melville.

Malaga was a triste city where I breathed in the sweet sea smell for the first time since my Spain trip for Flamenco.

Jerez was an inspiring city full of sherry scent. Somewhat for my writing, because the city seemed to keep the essence of flamenco as what it is.

Thinking of a line which a flamenco said: 'Flamenco is the tragedy in the first person'.

abrazos

Gohk

Madrid, Apr., 2006

 

Dear Lau:

My visit to Madrid would be ended as just a
short tourism, If I had not had a good luck, as below, 

 

to meet a street guitarist playing a Bach ,
to take a long walk in the Museo of MNCARS where I
stood looking at a modern painting titled Louvre

 

together with other several modern artworks familiar to me,
and lastly to find an time-worn  cinema hall 5 minutes walk away

 

from the hostel MAD where I have stayed, which gave me as a gift a movie

 

regarding Carmen Amaya dancing flamenco.
 

 

 

Late at my last night in Spain here, dim and drizzling outside

 

I sit in a bar alone with my ears given to classical music

 

over vino blanco and smoking tobacco.

 

That is a rare experience for me to taste a deep solitude,

 

a kind of an odor of nostalgia, pure and dry.

 

different from the loneliness, sorrowful and wet.

Adios
Gohk