>> This next poem belongs to a book called Contracorriente and this book is --
Each letter has a letter of the alphabet.
It's very one of the -- It's a difficult book to explain.
It started as a kind of a book written for broader minds,
who is in a sense a lost soul or a very strange character.
And it started as a poem for him and then it became something else.
And it became a - A poem about water and it became a poem where water is the vehicle
for words and it became a poem about everything that can come, everything that is thrown
around about garbage, about birds, about words that can be garbage, about messages
and everything started jumping into this poem and jumping out of this poem.
And so, it's hard to explain.
It's more -- It's something that you would namely explains itself while it's read
but then it's forgotten once you stop reading it.
So this is the letter y, it's one of the shorter ones and it has an epic rhyme
by Federico García Lorca which says y el agua harapienta de los pies secos.
Óyelo, hermano, cómo se madreperla oblicuando su filón de granito en las zonas bajas,
cómo se corusca, se arrisca, se lastima, va de lengua.
En idiomatismo retumbando por el surco con su forma de roca.
En rumbo, cómo se desempieza al organizar otro principio, cantarino.
En loma ajena, mudando ovejas por tramo de calles, cuánto bala,
hermano de nítidas causas, oye y defínelo en consecuencia,
¿amaga el orto o es mera luz de nuevo en el matadero?, agua a contrapelo,
hocico a tiempo para el despilfarro, los ríos de la sangre no corren así,
según mi libro de ciencia, ah, realista,
yo desplumé por paja a mi gallo trashumante y luego, náyade al fin,
gane corriente en calidad de ofrenda, quizás engañe pero conmisero, tanto sol por metáfora,
sensible sol, no caduca con los hechos, aunque duela el renco tedio de su belleza.
A mediodía, cuando toco el vidrio empalmado con la figura más cercana, y me digo,
se siente la fría, blanca, muda merma de la materia, va siendo hora, niña severa,
de entrometer la pasión donde sólo raya el día, lo aconsejan amigos, tregua del cálculo,
que nadie se engaste en aquel nicho de los sentidos,
cancelando mi pretexto para un ambiguo conocimiento de cualquier barbarie,
no vaya a faltar cuerda para enredar mi escepticismo con fórmulas socarronas.
Divísame hermano, hay hados silvestres en esta banqueta o la moraleja es otra.
Por la razón se comparte un mínimo indicio de odio.
Yo peco por tí, el prójimo lo sabe.
One thing I didn't mention about this book is that all the poems are separated.
They're very long lines and it's only separated by commas.
So it's hard, especially if you're a smoker.
It's hard to read out loud and finish the lines [inaudible] commas.
[ Inaudible ]
>> Y. And the water dressed in rags but with dry feet.
Federico García Lorca.
Listen, brother, how the mother of pearls slanting its granite vein
into the low zones, how it leaps the crags, suffers wounds, spouts idioms,
roaring through the furrow like a rock on course.
How it unbegins arranging another beginning, babbles on a hill belonging
to another herding sheep on the stretch of street,
so much bleeding, brother, of clear causes.
Listen, and then make your definitions in a pending sunrise or just more light
in the slaughterhouse, water against the grain, muzzle in time to squander,
rivers of blood don't flow that way or so says my science book, such a realist.
If for no good reason I pluck my roaming rooster and then a naiad to the end,
increase the current as an offering.
I may mislead but I do commiserate so much metaphorical sun,
sensitive sun that never expires with the facts,
although at noon the hamstrung boredom of its beauty hurts.
When I touch the window pane, joined to the nearest figure,
I'd tell myself you can feel the cold, white, silent diminishment of matter.
It's high time, severe daughter, to let passion intrude where only the day breaks.
Friends advise it, cease calculating.
No one should be embedded in that niche of sense,
negating my excuse for any kind of barbarity.
Ambiguously no.
Don't forget the rope to entangle my skepticism with cunning formulae.
Attend me, brother.
The sidewalk breeds wild fates or else the moral changes through reason,
the slightest trace of hatred is shared.
I sinned for you, the others noticed.