CARLOS RAFAEL DOMÍNGUEZ

a
hobo
at
heart
VIGNETTES

March - 2009

1
 Since the “linyera de alma” got an identity in the

Gutenberg universe in 2004, as a consequence, started

sharing his inner world in a conscious and voluntary way

with anybody who accepts his virtual company. At that

moment his reflections ceased to be monologues and

became open dialogues.

Sometimes they are dialogues with words. Other times,

they are only meaningful silences. Many others, simple

heartly greetings materialized by a curious visit to the blog.

He wrote in Spanish. Now he dare offer an anthology in

English of some of the vignettes in the blog.

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being eighty in a classroom
To my dear students, past and present.

eighty´s a lot...
eighty´s something...
eighty´s nothing...

years lived in a classroom...

years spent in a classroom...
years enriched in a classroom...

grey days...
red-hot days...
golden days...

painful hours...
pleasant hours...
orgastic hours...

never teaching...
seldom idling...
always learning...

an old man at the start...

a mature boy midway...
a joyful child in the end...

sharing mind...
sharing mind and soul...
sharing mind and soul and heart...

forgotten rationality...
lost passions...
abiding innocence...

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the diary of the hobo at heart

After a couple of months of publishing a daily report in Spanish in this blog of “un linyera de
alma” , dealing with very slight things found in the coffer of his memories, this hobo at heart
made up his mind to start replicating some of them in English from time to time to reach, just in
case, a further readership.
He wrote this:

TO BEGIN WITH

In June I celebrated my eightieth birthday. It is not too little, and it is not too much. The
decision of how long that space of time we call our life must be, (a space which, after all, is not
so ours as it may seem, since it is not in our own hands.) Whose decision is its length? Should I
know it, I would try to make a deal with that fellow and reach an agreement.
Being so ignorant in this respect (as in many others) I made up my mind to let me flow in life
as one of those old hobos I had known walking along the rails just in front of my house. They
were often travelling on a freight train without having the faintest idea about the destination.
A few years ago, having got disabled for the loss of my legs, in my leisure time, I cast an eye
backwards on my previous footprints and scribbled a little book in Spanish called “PALABRAS
MARCADAS. Diario de un linyera de alma.”, which would sound like “Marked Words. A diary
of a Hobo at Heart.” Numerous friends and old acquaintances as well as many occasional
curious readers have got in touch with these pages and not a few gave me back their sympathy.
Recently I made up my mind once more, perhaps senselessly, to employ this new kind of
paper offered to us by postmodern times with really unforeseen possibilities. I know I am taking
a greater risk by starting a similar enterprise in English. A different way of going sowhere else?
No matter how it must be, here I send to the space the waves of this “hobo at heart.”

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moments of a mental vacuum

In one of those moments the hobo at heart scribbled a page for MIS PALABRAS and he wants
to share it now with his friends

WHERE? WHEN?.

Today...
Yesterday...
Always...
Never...
Before...
Afterwards...
Tomorrow...
Never...
Next week...
Never...
Always...
Next month...
Never...
Next year...
Never...
Any time...

In my bedrom.
In the air...
On the grass...
On the sand...
In the water...
Under a tree..
At the computer...
On a train...
Underground...

Alone?
With anybody?
Am I somebody?
Was I somebody?
Am I something?
Was I something?
Shall I be something?

The society...

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 Wat´s that?
Anything different from the whole world?
From the universe?

Floating...
Floating...
Floating...
Gently...
Softly...
Just with a few dear ones...
Very dear ones...
Who are...
Who were...
Who will be...
For ever...
Only one thing...
With me..
With the world...
With my world...

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a romantic night
You cannot be a true hobo at heart if you don´t keep a bit of romanticism inside. Looking at a
postcard of one of the old houses where he had spent a couple of years in his childhood in a
quiet neighborhood in Buenos Aires he was pervaded by one of his most vivid recollections.
Here it is how he wrote about his experience some time ago.

MOONSCAPE

A night of full moon. Almost as clear as day. Bathed in a brilliant moonlight. One of those
nights of the Buenos Aires I remember. But not one of those sung in the tango, nights “full of
laughter and kisses and cotinuous partying.” A night of that Buenos Aires, serene and placid. In
a rather modest neighborhood,. “silver-plated by the moon.”
In the postcard, vividly enough, you can see a little flowerbed sorrounded by a tiled floor and
the end of a covered corridor just in front of it. An old wooden bench (like one of the park
benches of those days) was there against the wall. A spot of intensely white light was falling full
on it, coming from the sky, from the part of the river. The brilliant rounded spot was not exactly
on the green bars of the seat of the bench, but on the face, lost in thought, of a ten years old boy.

With a certain effort I recognized myself as the boy lying there on the bench., the eyes fixed
on the full moon that was paying me a visit. What for? Who knows? She was like a girlfriend
coming to give me a bright kiss on my forehead inviting me to a secret while of intimacy. Both
of us were dreaming, the moon and me. In the most absolute solitude. Only dreams. Far from
logical or mercantile reflections. No future projects. No past distresses. Only dreams. What
about? About nothing at all. This is the most entrancing dream As it was before opening our
eyes for the first time or closing them when we will breathe our last. A blank dream. No colors.
No contrasts. No waking up.
Full moon! Only once in my life, long afterwards, we met again in a similar way, alone, the
moon and me. She has ben already trampled by the mean feet of ambitious human beings. But
she remains for me, now and for ever, that moon of an immaculate and virgin light. My old eyes
are tired if seeing, and seeing, and seeing. They always feel themselves purified by the caresses
of her light.

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the hobo discovers latin

As ninety percent of the things that happened to him through his now long eighty years of life,
his encounter with classic languages was completely fortuitous. It was neither the result of a
strong calling raised in a familiar context nor an effect of his first teachers' impulses. His
discovery was purely casual. Unpredictable. However, it was a true turning point. IIt became as
if it were the leitmotiv in the whole development of the melodies of his wanderings
The encounter was told by himself this way, in one of his memory books:

****************

Again trees, plants, flowers, fresh and pure air, freedom, nature, the train heading towards the
unknown, always new worlds though they seem to be always the same...
Trees, parks, gardens... have known all by themselves how to make the hobo's happiness.
However, sometimes they have not been the cause by themselves but through some secret they
have kept so well and could transmit to the little hobo.
Summer of 1939. A new house. From old Oran to old Ensenada. Neither of those street names
exist yet. Miserable memory-killing Buenos Aires mayors!
Walking at random along Rivadavia towards downtown... Getting to the borders of Flores, I
found the sign “San Pedrito.” Below it, another sign, an arrow pointing towards the right. It said
“To Avellaneda Park.” Another day I tried to make an investigation together with my aunt Pilo,
a great walker. We arrived at Rivadavia and San Pedrito and started following the arrow.
Towards Directorio. There, to the right. Many blocks. We crossed Ensenada again. What a
useless walk! The direct road would have been a lot shorter. No problem. The discovery was
worthwhile. “But this is Olivera Park!” my aunt told me. And again the changing names mania!
We started walking and enjoying. We got to a fenced place. A space with games: slides, swings,
giant´s strides, sandboxes... None of them took my attention. Only, a legend on the pavement
under the entry arch. “MOTUS EST VITA ”.
- What does it mean?
- It´s not Spanish.
- What is it?
- I don´t understand much, but I think it´s Latin.
- Latin?
- Yes, an ancient language. Mass is celebrated in Latin.
- Do you understand what is said there?
- I´m not sure, but it is related to games. I guess it means something like “moving is life”,
“motion is life”...
- MOTUS EST VITA, MOTUS EST VITA, MOTUS EST VITA.....
I fell in love with those words... And that mysterious language? Ancient? Farfetched?
Two years went by. Everything had been immersed in a world of dreams. But dreams have their
own life. They walk and walk. Or else they are carried away in the hobos´ train.

*************************

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 Not against his will but without his will, the little hobo, taken by deceitful dreams (that truly
exist) was dragged to a school for prospective priests, a group of boys filled with empty
illusions... First disappointments... No, those were not the little hobo's dreams, but... He found
something that pleased him a lot. Since the first days they put him in touch with Latin. What a
fantastic world! He treasured books and books... In a very short time he got ahead of his courses
and professors. He navigated alone, truly alone. Through a biblical poetry world, a world of
Julius Caesar, of Roman legions, of forums, of Senate discussions, of adventures, of legends, of
love, of philosophies, of history… And the Greek world came... A whole pleasing and delicious
inner world... Little did he care about the coarseness and rainstorms of the outside world. That
world was very rich, very intense for the hobo. But at the same time it was a trap, that stopped
him at the same station. When living so intensely in his own inside, what was outside sort of
slid unnoticed, being monotonous, pedestrian, hypocritical, savage... What a world that one
inside of him! The classical world! In a little hobo's head! A golden cage for years... It taught
him how to think, to deliberate, to see a fantastic world's things, but hid him everyday realities.
Until the day the cage's gold threads broke down almost without knowing how, and, with an
always dreamt freedom finally conquered but never lived before, he realized that that classical
world was also useful to live in the real world. What a mystery classical languages are!

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a night not so romantic

The hobo at heart had written in his memoirs:

A MOONLESS NIGHT

Again the moon and the little hobo as in a previous postcard, that of “a romantic night”. In
complete solitude.
A moonless night. The same neighborhood. The same house. The same little garden. The same
corridor. The same bench. But this time, a dimly lit scenario. A hidden moon.
Large blak clouds filled the sky. Only a dim thread of light coming from the streetlight swinging
in the air on the corner of Ensenada and Rafaela. The image of a little boy sitting on the bench is
hardly visible in the semidarkness. Scanning over and over I managed to find out that the little
boy sitting on the bench was the same that was in the other postcard, immersed in a sweet
dialogue with the full moon. It was me. Myself! Perhaps one year later. Just on the point of
finishing my primary school.
But was I exactly the same? Yes and no. I believe nobody is the same being he was a second
before. An infinite number of details which build up our personality are continually in search of
a new balance. At least, that is my experience. And there were periods in my life when those
changes seemed to be true revolutions.
There I was sitting, not lying as in the previous year. Almost in darkness. But thoughts kept
very active even in darkness. Communication with the outer world seemed to have stopped. My
senses were sort of frozen. Only my mind was on active service transmitting a light shivering to
each cell of the body.
Looking at the postcard through the misty lenses of dozens of years, I think I am in a position
to risk a tentative interpretation of the tremors of that child in that moonless night. Now I
scrutinize them not only through a time-dirty lens but also through my personal experiences,
some of them lived all by myself and some others perceived from people around me. They all
gave me lots of views very different from the ones.I had foreseen.
Behind those tremors, in a distant past, I can identify, however, a very long series of cloudy
threatening ghosts, all of them in relation with the future and that could be put together under a
very general label : “fears.” Evidently for each of those tremors in my fragile body there was, in
my childish little head, which dit not want to become adult, a corresponding uninterrupted
sequence of discharges very similar to those of an electric current. It was a muddled
undecipherable heap of very black storm clouds seen in a more or less upcoming horizon. A
complete lack of definition. An unknown future. The inexorable rest of that mystery called life.
Studies? Work? The family? The military service? Just surviving?
To flee? Desperately. To flee? Where? Towards the unknown. Far. Very far. To be a
missionary? To work in a leper colony in the Philippine Islands? Fleeing, fleeing, fleeing... The
Foreign Legion in Africa? Fleeing, fleeing, fleeing... As in panic.
But unexpectedly I happened to be swallowed by a black hole, captivated by the sweetness of
fallacious dreams... All this, however, is not recorded in the picture. Only tremors can be seen

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there.

from the hobo´s memoirs

LITTLE COINCIDENCES
“The child is father of the man” said once William Wordsworth. Many people I know and
many more I do not know rushed to their childhood in search of their present identity. I never
tried this exploration intentionally, but, as time went by, in some strange ways, I became
experimentally certain of the truth enclosed in those words.
Let us rewind the tape a bit. I have recently, under the heading of “Diario de un linyera de
alma”, compared my own life to the continuous wandering of a drifter. In this rather long and
sometimes blind continuous walking I came across an uncountable number of very little
incidents almost completely deleted from my memory in the course of time.
Curiously enough, writing in retrospection, many of these trivial events reentered my already
old mind almost subreptitiously. Let us, by way of example, take some of them, which
mysteriously returned in a sort of chain.
One series of these unexpected experiences did not start on the wonderful fells of Wordworth
´s lake district but on the no less wonderful hills of Tandil. As for the great majority of my
fellow citizens Che Guevara entered my brain in 1959. I was in Tandil, on holidays, having
breakfast in the thick and fresh shadow of some huge pines. I was listening to the radio.
Suddenly a mystic caribbean breeze from another hill, called Sierra Maestra, caressed my young
imagination, a then young imagination, full of dreams of heroic even if utopic social ideals and
arcane adventures. I did not figure out neither awful bloodshed nor scattered corpses in the least.
I only felt transported to a world of glorious and romantic deeds in the pleasant atmosphere of a
fairy tale.

******************************

It was in 1999. In the evening. Bus terminal in Tandil. November. I had just finished
my teaching task that Friday and was waiting for my bus to Mar del Plata. The
departure was due a bit late. My eyes were attracted by a magazine in a newsstand. In
its cover there was the unmistakable face of the Che in full colour. It was an impression
similar to that experienced fourty years before also in Tandil. I bought it and got on the
bus. I took a seat and fumbled for the reading light. Fortunately it was working that night. I
covered my ears not to be disturbed by the deafning sound from the movie they were projecting,
and, ¡surprise!, in the central pages I found : Alta Gracia, with a photo of the house where Che
had lived and a small map of the Carlos Pellegrini neighbourhood where it is placed. I looked at
it several times. Again and again. I soon recognized, as in a mist, “my” neighbourhood once in
my childhood in Alta Gracia and “my” house near the then very famous Sierras Hotel. Many,
many years ago.

*****************************

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 Scanning a couple of books and my own memory I discovered that Che was four days older
than me. Both had been born in June 1928 and since 1932 to 1936 both had been neighbours in
Alta Gracia. I lived there, intermittenly, half of the time of the first eight years of my life
because of my father´s lung disease. Before 1932 we had occupied a chalet called Villa Nydia
and after that date we lived in some other place nearby. Precisely in that year. the Guevara
family went to Alta Gracia because Ernesto suffered from asthma. They rented different houses
but since 1934 they lived in Villa Nydia, exactly where I had lived before. During four years,
since 1932 to 1936 we shared the same neighbourhood very near Sierras Hotel to whose park
we both often used to go.

****************************

In July 2001 the “Museo Municipal del Che” was opened in Villa Nydia. I was there during
the week of the inauguration. It was a physical encounter with my early childhood. How to
describe my feelings on that occasion would be an impossible task.

********************************
After that I believed nothing else would be discovered in the chain of that series of
coincidences. But there was no end. For the celebration of the Week of the Che 07, I sent to the
Museum a brief paper called “So far and so near”. One of its paragraphs ran like this:
Teté (as he was called then) had a good number of friends. He was very friendly and naughty.
I was looked after very much at home and very rarely was alone outdoors. Practically the only
friend in those days whose name I remember was Dante, son of the caretakers of a luxurious
neighbouring mansion. With Dante I walked all the streets and places of Villa Carlos Pellegrini
(a rather small and peaceful district close to the then aristocratic Sierras Hotel). From time to
time we engaged with other children of the neighbourhood in some spontaneous football match
at a quiet crossroads. We were no more than a dozen. The Che´s biographers say he often was
mixed in that kind of events. It seems almost impossible we have not met more than once.
To my great surprise, a week ago I found in a blog of “isla negra”, something written recently
by one of Che´s brothers, Roberto:
My parents´relations were those of rich people and ours those of the poor ones, people who
lived permanently in the area. Our friends were the children of the peasants and “caseros”, that
is to say, those who were the caretakers of other persons´ houses and proprieties. I remember the
Vidosa, Ariel and Dante, whom we named Tiqui….
Apparently, a common friend was another close link in this chain of little coincidences. One
more. Is not this a strong and strange revival of childhood in the life of an old man, the revival
of that child who, in Wordswoth´s words, can really be called. his “father”?.

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like an episode out of a novel

Someone who thinks what he thinks himself, at least, as regards some spontaneous focuses of
reality. That is truly rewarding for the hobo at heart. At this time in his life, it is almost
impossible for him to find a really new point of view in reference to the limited world view a
human being can achieve. However, he is indeed happy to meet another planet walker that has
some elementary agreements with him.
Unexpectedly, the other day, a familiar voice called him from Paris, and told him that a
common acquaintance, Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, would be awarded the Nobel Prize in
Literature. .
- “I know this is an irrelevant piece of news for you,” she told him, “but this event can be an
exception. I think we are talking about a true hobo at heart. You'll love to read some of his
novels. I give you a couple of samples related to his central attitude towards life and the world.”

- “OK," answered the hobo. “Tell me something.”

- “One of his works is devoted to Estrellita, a wandering star. I would say she is no less than a
hobo woman.”
- “She’s one of us!”
- “Le Clézio is a voracious walker looking for different places and cultures.”
- “Without a fixed commitment. He´s a true hobo.”
- “Once he defined himself as a traveller, a world citizen, a nomad.”
- “We have something in common.”
- “When he was young, he left school for a year to explore new horizons elsewhere.”
- “The other day I heard a famous rock singer suggesting youngsters who wish to succeed in
life, to leave school before their brains putrefy.”
- “That’s too much.”
-“I agree, in a way. But you have to defend yourself.”
- “Another coincidence with you.”
- “Which one?”
- “His first novel was `Le Procès-Verbal´. You wrote `Palabras marcadas´”
- “ The language role in our lives!"
- “May be the novel you will like most is `Désert´. It’s about the story of a Saharan woman who
travels along Europe as a hobo at heart.”
- “How many things that bring us together!”
- “OK, let’s end up. I hope I have left you a picture of a, if not twin, very similar soul to yours.”
- “Thanks. It’s good to know that sometimes even in Stockholm they appreciate a hobo.”

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true hobos

Once upon a time, being a little child, the hobo at heart met true hobos for the first time and,
strangely enough, he fell in love with their life style.

MY FIRST MEETING

It was in my native little town, El Triunfo, which was very young then and is celebrating its
centenary next year. It is adjacent to the railway line called Ferrocarril Oeste at that time and
near the old Alsina ditch.

SLEEPER

- Where are we going?

- Till we´re exhausted.

- Till the signal, grandpa?
- And further. If we pass the level crossing, we´ll continue a little more.
- To the end of the rails?
- Uh... too far away... Buenos Aires is at the end...
- You came from there, didn´t you? Is it big?
- Huge..
- Why are these pieces of wood under the rails?
- So the rails are seized. They are called sleepers. So the train moves softly.
- What a name!
- They are motionless there, as if they were asleep.
- Sleepers, you said. I´ll never forget it. Where are they taken from?
- From a hard-wood tree. It´s name is “quebracho”.
- Are you staying with us long enough? So we can come back to walk along the rails stepping
on the sleepers.
- I´m staying for a few days... Next week I´m going back to my home in Buenos Aires.
It was 1933... March... Luckily for the little hobo under shool age.... He was as free as birds and
butterflies.
Suddenly a strange noise was heard... The signal went down...
- The train is coming! Let´s stay aside and see it going past slowly to its halt at the station.
- There´s time yet. It´s just leaving the other station. It´s coming from Buenos Aires.
- And where does it get?

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- Too far away. Crossing the dunes. Miles and miles. A lot of sleepers. A lot. A lot.
We sat next to the rails and started waiting.
- There comes the train! I can see the locomotive smoke.
- Is it a goods train or a passenger train?
- A freight train. Because it´s no time for the passenger train to pass.
- There it is! Look! There are two hobos sitting on the roof. Are they staying in our town?
- Who knows? They never know where to go. They travel and travel and travel When they wish
to they step down and stay somewhere for a few days. Then they go on... or go back...
- What a great life! Would you like to be a hobo? I certainly would.

blue idyll

The hobo’s wanderings are now almost exclusively urban. From the yearning countryside that
once was the hobo’s environment, he preserves many postcards very well kept in the most
romantic corner of his soul,. Here goes one.
This is a postcard with special characteristics. Though belonging to my first childhood, it
appears as a composition only possible due to the magic of a modern computer.
The background shows a huge field that covers the whole postcard, extended to the infinite,
endless, there, there, there… I was cutting the air and the dust, sitting on the “International” of
the store, a big delivery truck without a cockpit. A carpet of blue flowers, really deep blue,
swung in the breeze waving as gently as the most elegant ballet dancers on tiptoe . A captivating
sea of peace and harmony. Everything is blue. A scenery that invites the hobo to jump into the
ocean of life without fears or distresses…
At a corner of the postcard, as if it were a little window, a small gray paper envelope with a
four-letter label: F-L-A-X . The envelope is on a shelf over mi father's desk, together with many
others that say “wheat”, “corn”, “barley”, “rye” and many more. But the F-L-A-X envelope
seems to stand out. I don't know, it's the most elegant, it's the centre, the king. It is as if my eyes
saw it blue. Soy didn’t appear in those years.

The third element from the composition has nothing to do with something visual. No doubt it
was added to the postcard some time later. It’s a waltz of Homero Expósito from 1947. Images
are from many years before. But, though I don’t know exactly the reason, those musical beats
were attached and inseparablefrom it (at least to me). “Oh Flax flower, what a strange destiny
cut short a road full of flax flowers... What a caressing music! “ I saw her bloom as flax in an
Argentine field ripe in the sun…” Ah! Those flax fields! So blue! Are all these views from a
yesterday world? No! “There´s a gate through which memories return to the dear home...”
And a fourth element is added, which is stuck to this mysterious postcard as a cataplasm.
Exactly as a cataplasm. With the whole aroma of flax flour that my grandmother used to put on
me every time she thought it necessary and beneficial for my health. This used to happen
frequently. That was a delicious aroma for me and imbued for ever that old postcard with a love
touch, as if anything still lacked. It looked even as a blue scent.
What a richness of sensations! All together in one already blurred postcard. Blurry but still
capable to revive very pleasant and everlasting memories. Past that is still present and will be
future until… Blue idyll!
Without my will interference, I saw myself precociously far away, in the real life , from those
blue fields… Would have been my destiny any different if I had continued floating among
them? Oh! That flax field! “…your memory always haunts me through the ever night of my

15
loneliness…”

Acknowledgement: Mel is gently lending me a hand with the English version of my vignettes.

drinking “mate” alone

The hobo would like to be in a circle of friends drinking “mate”. In many ways they give him
support to continue with his “enterprise” of pulling the leaves of his thoroughly ordinary
memories and impressions. During this “extra time” of his existence. A “virtual” meeting to
drink “mate” is not the same. It is so nice to have mate with someone! But having the “mate” as
a company when you are alone is also nice.
Drinking “mate”… Without a scenery… Without a company… Just the kettle, the “mate”, the
“yerba” … the “bombilla” and me....

A sip, a memory…
A sip, a wish…
A sip, a trip to far lands…
A sip, a search in emptiness…
A sip, a sudden decision…
A sip, a friendly smile…
A sip, grapeshot clatters…
A sip, a friendly dog’s look…

A sip, a bittersweet tear…

A sip, an invisible mate-party among friends…
A sip, a breeze caress…
A sip, savage howls…
A sip, a thankful hand…
A sip, a farewell…
A sip, a brief visit from beloved ones...
A sip, in privacy with the dearest woman…

16
 A sip, a long kiss…
A sip, a world of romantic songs... .
A sip, a moon filled with melancholic light…
A sip, a sun of hopeful fire…
A sip, a rough loud laugh of red wine…
A sip, a blank of absences…
A sip, and another sip, and another one, and…

(Mel´s hand was also helpful here)

sharing a lyre
The Skeleton

Chattering finch and water-fly

Are not merrier than I;
Here among the flowers I lie
Laughing everlastingly.
No; I may not tell the best;
Surely, friends, I might have guessed
Death was but the good King's jest,
It was hid so carefully.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

El esqueleto

Pájaros en el aire y pececillos y en el agua,

Decidme si más que yo alguien alegre se halla;
En dulce paz aquí tengo entre las flores mi cama,
Río y río sin medida,
Y si hay algo que me asombra
Esta es, amigos, del caso la importancia toda:
Que la muerte solo era de mi buen Rey una broma
¡Estaba tan escondida!

El linyera de alma

The Human Tree

Many have Earth's lovers been,

Tried in seas and wars, I ween;

17
 Yet the mightiest have I seen:
Yea, the best saw I.
One that in a field alone
Stood up stiller than a stone
Lest a moth should fly.

Birds had nested in his hair,

On his shoon were mosses rare,
Insect empires flourished there,
Worms in ancient wars;
But his eyes burn like a glass,
Hearing a great sea of grass
Roar towards the stars.

From them to the human tree

Rose a cry continually:
`Thou art still, our Father, we
Fain would have thee nod.
Make the skies as blood below thee,
Though thou slay us, we shall know thee.
Answer us, O God!

Show thine ancient fame and thunder,

Split the stillness once asunder,
Lest we whisper, lest we wonder
Art thou there at all?'
But I saw him there alone,
Standing stiller than a stone
Lest a moth should fall.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

EL ARBOL HUMANO

Probado fui en los mares y las guerras;

Mucho supe de amantes en la tierra;
Pero aquello que he visto con más fuerza,
Lo mejor que hube visto,
Estaba allí plantado como roca,
No fuera a perturbar las mariposas.

Han puesto en él los pájaros su nido,

Raros musgos han a sus pies dormido,
Mil imperios han allí florecido
De los gusanos en sus viejas guerras;
Mas centellan sus ojos como fuego
Al oir las malezas que del suelo
Furiosas rugen hacia las estrellas.

Así hasta el árbol humano

Se alza un grito desde el llano
“¡Oh Padre, mueve tu mano,

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 Déjanos oir tu voz;
Convierte en sangre los cielos;
Aplástanos, ay, empero
Contéstanos, oh Dios!”

“Muestra tu poder de trueno,

Rompe esa quietud de acero;
Para que ya no dudemos
Que allí presente tú estás”.
El allí sigue plantado
Como roca, solitario,
Nada quiere perturbar.

El linyera de alma

THE STRANGE MUSIC

Other loves may sink and settle, other loves may loose and slack,
But I wander like a minstrel with a harp upon his back,
Though the harp be on my bosom, though I finger and I fret,
Still, my hope is all before me : for I cannot play it yet.

In your strings is hid a music that no hand hath e'er let fall,
In your soul is sealed a pleasure that you have not known at all;
Pleasure subtle as your spirit, strange and slender as your frame,
Fiercer than the pain that folds you, softer than your sorrow's name.

Not as mine, my soul's annointed, not as mine the rude and light
Easy mirth of many faces, swaggering pride of song and fight;
Something stranger, something sweeter, something waiting you afar,
Secret as your stricken senses, magic as your sorrows are.

But on this, God's harp supernal, stretched but to be stricken once,

Hoary time is a beginner, Life a bungler, Death a dunce.
But I will not fear to match them—no, by God, I will not fear,
I will learn you, I will play you and the stars stand still to hear.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

EXTRAÑA MÚSICA

Hay amores pasajeros, amores hay que se aplacan;

Cual trovador incansable que lleva el arpa a su espalda,
Yo, con mi arpa sobre el pecho, pulso y pulso sin cesar,
Mas solo guardo esperanzas: sus notas no sé arrancar.

Esconden una música tus cuerdas, que jamás alguien tocó,

Sellado un placer hay en tu alma, que jamás alguien soñó:
Tan sutil como tu espíritu, grácil como tu figura.
Más dura que la pena que te envuelve, más suave que tu angustia.

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 Golpeada mi pobre alma, y en varios regocijos aturdida,
Orgullosa en sus luchas y su canto, no como tú, muy sola está mi vida;
Muy misterioso algo encierra, mucho más dulce y lejano,
Secreto como tus venas, mágico, triste y extraño.

Pero en esta, de Dios arpa superna, habrán las cuerdas de sonar muy fuerte,
En ella el Tiempo es aprendiz, la Vida es torpe, y es necia hasta la Muerte.
Lejos de mí el temor de usar tus cuerdas – por Dios, lejos de mí,-
Yo he de saber hacerlo y las estrellas, su marcha detendrán, sí, para oír.

El linyera de alma

The Sword of Surprise

Sunder me from my bones, O sword of God

Till they stand stark and strange as do the trees;
That I whose heart goes up with the soaring woods
May marvel as much at these.

Sunder me from my blood that in the dark

I hear that red ancestral river run
Like branching buried floods that find the sea
But never see the sun.

Give me miraculous eyes to see my eyes

Those rolling mirrors made alive in me
Terrible crystals more incredible
Than all the things they see

Sunder me from my soul, that I may see

The sins like streaming wounds, the life's brave beat
Till I shall save myself as I would save
A stranger in the street.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

La espada de la sorpresa
Córtame de mis huesos, espada de mi Dios,
Hasta quedar cual árbol, tieso, duro y extraño;
Mi corazón quiere elevarse cual sus ramas,
Y llenarse de asombro allá en lo alto.

De mi sangre sepárame; en tinieblas

El rojo antiguo torrente oigo correr
Y esos cursos ocultos que al mar van
Sin jamás el sol ver.

Dame ojos milagrosos para ver mis pupilas,

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 Los vivientes espejos que hay en mí,
Más raros y terribles
Que cuanto en ellos reflejarse vi

Sepárame de mi alma, quiero ver

La sangre de mis culpas, los golpes del destino;
Por salvarme a mí mismo, como haría
Con un extraño al borde del camino.

El linyera de alma

a touch of nationalism

A CIDER SONG

The wine they drink in Paradise

They make in Haute Lorraine;
God brought it burning from the sod
To be a sign and signal rod
That they that drink the blood of God
Shall never thirst again

The wine they praise in Paradise

They make in Ponterey,
The purple wine of Paradise,
But we have better at the price;
It's wine they praise in Paradise,
It's cider that they pray.

The wine they want in Paradise

They find in Plodder's End,
The apple wine of Herford,
Of Hafod Hill and Herford,
Where woods went down to Herford,
And there I had a friend.

The soft feet of the blessed go

In the soft western vales,
The road of the silent saints accord,
The road from heaven to Herford,
Where the apple wood of Herford
Goes all the way to Wales.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

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UN CANTO A LA SIDRA
Beben en el Paraíso
El vino de Alta Lorena.
Dios lo arranca de esa tierra
Como señal valedera:
Quien prueba sangre de Dios
A la sed le dice adiós.

Honran en el Paraíso
El vino de Ponterrey.
Es purpúreo su color.
Nosotros algo mejor
Tenemos por ese precio
Nuestra sidra es superior.

Quieren en el Paraíso
Lo que producen en Plodder,
De manzanas el buen vino
Que saben tomar en Herford,
En las colinas de Hafod,
Donde yo tenía un amigo.

Recorren con pies de seda

Los habitantes del cielo
El camino de los santos,
Por los valles hasta Herford
Cuyos dulces manzanares
Siguen el camino a Gales.

El linyera de alma

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forgetting

Tearing one of the hardest pages out of “Más palabras.”

It was yesterday, September 4th, seventy seven years ago, a “nigro signanda lapillo” day But the
amber black colour was noticed by that unwary kid a long time later. In 1941 everything seemed
pink for him. He followed the trace of something divine and unreachable.
Now the hobo at heart remembers it like this:

LETHE

Sacred river flowing through Hades....

With waters of oblivion…

Who obliged me to drink from your waters?

So many dear things left at your riverbanks!

So many things that would have helped me to live on!

So many beautiful things that left space for awful things!

But it wasn’t an endless oblivion.

Some things came back…

Not all…

Just some…

Very nice ones…

The entrance to all forgetfulness

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 The hobo, in this diary, wants to tell the story of some other words that were stored in some
special way in his mind, besides the marked ones. Beforehand, a previous step. Before
achieving new words in his brain :” Forget. Forget. Forget.” Erase from memory. Clean your
neurons with a good detergent and leave them empty. As if what existed, didn’t exist at all. As if
what has been, had not been at all. As if what was wished, be not wished now.
The passage through the River of Oblivion was, undoubtedly, looked at a distance; one of the
essential landmarks in the hobo’s trip. Those mysterious waters didn’t act in an immediate and
convincing way. It was something progressive, soft, imperceptible. But thus, step by step, those
invisible walls were being built, separating the hobo from the world he had lived in until then,
during his few years within his family, till the point of making him live immerse in an artificial
atmosphere, and see the real world only through those invisible but firm and, apparently,
impassable walls. Through those walls reality seemed, I dare say, distorted by the mysterious
optical quality of the material with which the walls were built. It was a subtly filtered up reality.
The portal that led me to the passage through the caressing waters of the river seemed so
attractive. Very attractive. Maybe to some people, maybe for most of my then partners, it was a
step to a sought and achieved happiness. I think I should say that it was so for very few of us,
because most of the ones I met there crossed that portal again in a sudden returning, even before
erasing their minds with forgetfulness. It took longer to the hobo, with his weary gait, to
discover that his way was notthat. At that moment the entrance was brilliant. It shined. It was
calling him. He was overwhelmed by charming mermaid songs.
The little hobo was a bit unwary Very unwary. He was an innocent and dreamer boy. He let
himself be dazzled. Just as he put a foot on the threshold under that solemn entrance, he
received a divine command: FORGET.

- You’re tired… drink something refreshing…

- It's a nice welcome… What can I drink?
- I have anything you want.
- OK.
- I offer you the reception glass.
- It seems exquisite… Bubbling…
- Drink it with pleasure...
- That is what I’m doing...
- You’ve entered the chosen ones’ land…
- I want to be near God…
- You’ll be always with Him…
- Can you assure it?
- With one condition. It depends on you.
- On me?
- Here you leave your entire world behind... Forget it! Forget it!
- For ever?
- You should never look back.
- And if I do?
- You'd have lost everything, and you’ll be damned to hell!
- .......................
- .......................
Forget… what? The command was revealed step by step…

(Many thanks, Mel)

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