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JoanMargarit
Dignity
If despair has the force
of logical certainty,
and envy a timetable as secret
as an army train, we are lost.
Castilian sti es me and I do not hate it.
It is not to be blamed for its strength:
for my weakness, even less.
Yesterday it was a well-structured language
for thinking in, for making pacts, for dreaming,
and which nobody now speaks:
a subconscious of loss and greed
in which the nest songs ring out.
The present is the language of the streets,
abused and adulterated, clinging on
like ivy to the ruins of history.
It is the language in which I write.
It is also a well-structured language
for thinking in, for making pacts, for dreaming.
And the old songs will be saved.