Sunday, January 07, 2007

¿Quién me ha robado el mes de abril?

En la posada del fracaso,
donde no hay consuelo ni ascensor,
el desamparo y la humedad
comparten colchón
y cuando, por la calle,
pasa la vida, como un huracán,
el hombre del traje gris
saca un sucio calendario del
bolsillo y grita
¿quién me ha robado el mes de abril?
Joaquín Sabina

Some things are too crude to allow for complication or adornment. Who stole the month April from me? I kept it in the drawer where I keep my heart. It's about sadness, the defeat that makes us ask useless questions. No one stole April from me, but I ask all the same, the pointless cry of looking for that which never was lost, never was. I never had April. Lágrimas de desamor, yes. Or not even tears, just desamor. The word doesn't exist in English, but it would be un-love, maybe. Desamor is not the end of a love, it is the unglamourous realisation that love was not there to begin with. The drawer was empty all along. Maybe a few dusty illusions, but not enough to evoke the fear of Pandora's box. Damned hope floats, un-love or no un-love. It's feeling slightly dirty for having fallen into such a transparent trap. But to end on a semi-optimistic note, as we tend to do? "April lies just around the corner." "We may have dislocated April, but there's always August." The equivalent of filling another drawer. But who the hell knows? The orgin of April is uncertain, but may be from aperire, to open. Maybe I'll try to impose importance, or sadness, just until March ends and the drawer opens to leave us with only ourselves, or what is left of that.

3 comments:

Hannah_Savannah said...

So,

I was going to write something intelligent because I love your introduction of the word desamor here but this is what came out.

Never mind the happy month of August when this is the description of April. I'll cross the bridge to August when I get there, but let me dwell in the drawers of desamor for a while and see what I can find. Let la vida pasa por la calle without me, let me stare sadness in the face when it comes. It does not come that often, let me treat it like a gift when it does. And yes, let's just wait and "be left with ourselves, or what is left of that". What is left will be a surprise, and it will shed a different light on August.

I bought a book by Thomas Moore titled something "The beautiful night of darkness", on the meaning of a crisis in a person's life. I cannot wait to read it.

Hannah_Savannah said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Hannah_Savannah said...

http://ungratefuldumpling.blogspot.com/2006/05/blog-oh-yeah-i-have-one-of-those.html