The Poems I Have Carried (With a Translation of 'Du im voraus' by Rainer Maria Rilke)

In my late teens, I discovered T.S.Eliot's 'The Lovesong of J.Alfred Prufrock'' Perhaps it was less a discovery and more of an inevitable introduction. My mother was taking a first-year English course at the university. She had just moved out of the family house, finding an apartment on a street that shared her name, Elizabeth. 

It was really my mother who presented the poem to me and I read the poem over and over again, the afternoons I went to see her in the summer or in the autumn evenings after school. I recall the leaves from the oak outside her window falling against the pane in the early dusk. It was her great anthology of English literature with the Constable painting on the cover. It was the first poem that awakened me to poetry. In school, whatever we read before was a means to a passing grade. In this book, I had found the first true relic of myself, a kind of first key. 

Sure, there were other poems by Browning, Whitman, and Tennyson but for someone in his teens, I felt that Eliot's poem was like a calling or perhaps, a reflection. It seemed to take on a kind of burden, that the narrator was encumbered by his own missteps and hesitation and inability to fully express himself with others, whether with his loved one or those he sat down to tea with. Yet he could relate to the nameless reader. 

I seemed to live in this poem and felt the October described, the sawdust restaurants, the evenings, seeing the arms with shawls, the women coming and going, the quiet, sepia streets that billowed. 

And also in that volume, a year later, I found Lord Byron's 'When We Two Parted' I would come back to that poem time and time again as I would Eliot's. Instead of a grander epic, only a handful of stanzas and the Great Romantic had managed to tell a tragic tell through suggestion and supposition. Who were these two who had parted and why? Well, it somehow didn't matter because the parting and the seeing each other were just as painful.

I reread the poem after breaking up with a girlfriend. I hadn't loved her tragically and soulfully but I felt our separation had a solemn meaning to it. I didn't know what to expect from her at the beginning of our relationship and the ending itself was anti-climatic. And yet I felt in some way I had let her down or not given any of it a chance, that my mind had rushed past any possibility because there was not enough for me. Or was it really, I didn't allow the 'enough' to build? I turned to Byron's poem for sympathy.

Then, when I got into wine, I had to find my Arthur Rimbaud again. 'The Drunken Boat' is the only poem I know so far that can capture the sense and wonder of inebriation, to feel you have been farther than you have been sober, that whatever thoughts you've had, they are untethered, wilder and limitless while inebriated. There is a sense of the countless in the poem, that things go on, that the horizon is just a 'word' and a 'misrepresentation' of what is. It also suggests the melancholy associated with too much wine and too much of a night. The narrator seems to recognize by poem's end that the careless and easy, godlike curiosity of childhood is richer than the one of a drunk. I feel, after every reading that the poet peaked at nineteen years of age because he knew all poetry and the poets who wrote were just offshoots of ego, that nothing could quite compare with the focused and seemingly vast imagination of childhood, that growing old, to quote Rilke, "has served no purpose."

Yet still, poetry is the lost imagination of childhood in adult life. A philosophy professor once said you are not too old to have a second childhood. Of course, this professor had three Ph.Ds and three divorces. So either he reverted to the childlike because he couldn't grow-up or because he couldn't handle anything else. 

Still, I find myself quoting him now and then, believing every time I embark on another poem, I am somehow still a child, finger painting this time with words. 

Other poems I've loved include the little known ''Black Marigolds'. Like with all great works of literature, they find you, no matter how esoteric or different. I discovered this poem at the end of John Steinbeck's Cannery Row, a mere few stanzas.

The original was written in Sanskrit by the 11th century Kasmir poet, Bilhana Kavi. Caurapañcāśikā or The Love thief is an epic poem some fifty stanzas long, a loving tribute to the woman Bilhana had an affair with. Considering his love was a princess and the father a tyrannical man, the author was imprisoned and given a death sentence. Fortunately or perhaps not, there is no real certainty whether the execution was carried out.  One story goes the king was so moved by the poem, he lifted the sentence. Another, that was he infuriated still and sent the poet to his immanent death. Like with Schroeder's cat, both possibilities play out in the mind of the well-reader.

Yet, whereas Eliot, Byron and Rimbaud are household names in the households of people familiar with the greats, the author of 'Black Marigolds' shares his talent with perhaps his most tender of translators, E. Powys Mathers. I have read other renditions but Mathers wins me over. It is the repetition of the words 'even now', his version of the Sanskrit 'adyapi' which suggest memory or looking back.

The entire poem is worth a read and it always difficult to find one stanza to isolate, to suggest as the true pinnacle or quintessential moment. It is like life: beautiful moments that cannot be remembered without the others. So yes, cannot extract a single part of the work that doesn't move me. And yes, fifty stanzas, surprisingly there is not one weak link in the chain.  

In Spanish, I love Lorca's "Horseman's Song" or 'Rider's Song' a quiet and tragic poem about a man doomed. We know nothing of his future or his past, we know what he knows and that he feels his death is coming soon. He is on his way to the Andalusian city of Córdoba but his arrival is uncertain. It is spare and perfect.

So too is Pablo Neruda's''Tonight I can write the saddest lines'. Without a doubt, one of the strongest poems about loss in that it doesn't attempt to be anything more than a simple testament. The poet remembers the bare things, his language is direct and gentle. It doesn't try to offer up allegories and metaphors, it doesn't try to challenge the reader with similes and strained references to other poems or works of literature. It is just one person saying that they have loved and that love is no longer there. 

And then perhaps my favourite poem, one I have rendered here is by the German Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke. To call him German, it would seem to limit him. He was born in what we would now be the Czech Republic. He lived throughout Europe and yes, he wrote in German but his ideas have the universal to them. Whereas Heine, Eichendorff, Morike and a host of other German authors embody their German and regional culture, Rilke transcends the local. He is not affixed to one place like Prague or Munich. In this he is like Hölderlin or Goethe, a poet that crosses borders and looks to the timeless and eternal. He shares with these two poets and humanity in general this affinity with the search for the divine. 

In one sense you could call him a metaphysical poem, in other, he is a Neo-Romantic like Stefan George but labels aside, there is yearning to the majority of his work and 'yearning' (sehnsucht) doesn't belong to one period in time or literature. One could attempt to analyze Rilke by looking at his life, donning the Freudian-cap. Perhaps there was no satisfaction in his life. Perhaps his marriage wasn't fulfilling but as Rilke once noted, one 'must live the question' and 'change one's life.' So all attempts to determine Rilke truly negate him.

Here is my translation, one I continue to work on, never quite feeling, just like the poem itself, it is complete.

Du im voraus

verlorne Geliebte, Nimmergekommene,
nicht weiß ich, welche Töne dir lieb sind.
Nicht mehr versuch ich, dich, wenn das Kommende wogt,
zu erkennen. Alle die großen
Bildern in mir, im Fernen erfahrene Landschaft,
Städte und Türme und Brücken und un-
vermutete Wendung der Wege
und das Gewaltige jener von Göttern
einst durchwachsenen Länder:
steigt zur Bedeutung in mir
deiner, Entgehende, an.

Ach, die Gärten bist du,
ach, ich sah sie mit solcher
Hoffnung. Ein offenes Fenster
im Landhaus—, und du tratest beinahe
mir nachdenklich heran. Gassen fand ich,—
du warst sie gerade gegangen,
und die spiegel manchmal der Läden der Händler
waren noch schwindlich von dir und gaben erschrocken
mein zu plötzliches Bild.—Wer weiß, ob derselbe
Vogel nicht hinklang durch uns
gestern, einzeln, im Abend?

You, just beyond,

lost beloved, never to arrive

I’m not even sure which songs will please you.

I’ve stopped looking for you in the coming

Wave of the next moment. Yet these great

Images in me - ever widening the landscape,

Cities, towers, bridges  

Unsuspecting turns in the path

And the lands forever trembling

With their intermingling gods -

All of it rising up against me and this meaning:

You, my eluding one.  

Ah, you are the gardens

I’ve seen with such

Longing. An open window

In the country house – and you nearly

Stepped out, pensively, just for me. Streets I found

You had seamlessly passed,

And sometimes the mirrors in the merchant shops,

Still joyously spinning from your reflection became startled

With mine, so unexpected. – Who knows whether the

Same bird sang through us

Yesterday, entirely alone, in the evening.

Cordoba at Night

"Do not let yourself be conquered by anything alien to your spirit."

- Seneca the Younger, Stoic philosopher, native of Cordoba (4 B.C. to 65 A.D.)

Plaza de la Tendillas

There are some cities that should be seen at night.

Amsterdam is one. By day, one wanders the canal-side streets with strangers, many of them tourists hoping to see a Van Gogh, learn about Heineken or down some herring like a seasoned native. At night, however, the world belong more to the locals. It's almost another city, more small-town-like, the cafes and bars bustling, friends and family buying each other another round of Amstel or Wieckse.

Cordoba is another such place meant for nightfall, especially in the summer. During the day, the heat is unyielding and extreme and though, yes, there are slender shadows of respite in the alleys, it never seems enough. One can take refuge under a cafe umbrella or beside a fountain but the sun is white, resilient and intense. The beer from the taverns is cool but the ice cream melts fast.

And during the day, of course is the only time you can explore the museums, or fully appreciate the architecture but there is something more vivid and yet dream-like about the lantern lit streets and courtyards. I don't know, maybe one feels spiritually closer to the ghost of the past, catching a glimpse of another century, whether Roman or Moorish. 

Seneca statue

The famous philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca was born here when the city was the capital of Hispania in the Roman Empire. Wandering the calles and quarters, one can find his statue near the old gate and in a small square not far from the Tendillas. And not far from the latter, an old Roman ruin, cut off from the public by a steel fence, a lone orange tree growing amidst the rubble. 

The orange tree was brought to southern Spain by the Moors. 

The city's fame rests more perhaps on the Moors than the Romans. Not long after Abd al-Rahman I of the Umayads left his home in Damascus, his family slaughtered by the rival Abbasids, he made his way west. The land of southern Spain which fell to the Vandals after the fall of Rome now fell to the Berbers, followers of Mohammed in north Africa. It was said Abd al-Rahman's mother was a Berber, a tribeswoman of what today would be Morocco.

He amassed support in Malaga and by 755 became a threat to the rulers of the city. They tried to marry him off. But no. He would have Cordoba.

Six years after his family's murder, Abd al-Rahman proclaimed himself emir in Cordoba (instead of caliph, which he could have rightfully done)

It was Abd al-Rahman that set the standard for the city. Though he wanted peace, it would be a long road to his own tranquility. As emir, he helped build the first great mosque of Cordoba, the Mezquita inspired by the Mosque of Damascus.

Interior, Mezquita

During the summer days, the mosque (now a Catholic church) is quietly mobbed by tourists. One walks through the Door of Forgiveness, buys a ticket in the Orange Tree Courtyard and heads to the Door of the Palms. Upon entering, one encounters the first nave, constructed in the emir's time. The mosque was built on the remains of the San Vicente Basilica and through a glass window in the floor, one can see the lost, brief world of the Visigoths who were vanquished in 711.

Amidst the over-lapping arches and the endless array of columns, there is a a kind of quasi-evening peace in the mosque. Abd al-Rahman, before his reign, was said to have written a poem in which he compared himself to a palm tree, lonely and in exile. Standing in the solemn, subdued light of the Mezquita's interior one could liken the experience to standing in a forest of palms at dusk. It is something fitting in that he made the lone palm of his melancholic poem into an icon of perseverance and strength, turning the one into many, building strength from the solitary.

Mezquita and Tourists

At night, the mosque is lit up, the walls a bright golden-brown. There are a few tourists and amidst the ledges, one can see the pigeons have found a place to rest for the night. 

In Cordoba's Golden Age, at the height of the 10th century, the city was a centre of vast wealth and culture. There were said to be 900 baths, tens of thousands of shops, running water from aquaducts and a library containing some 400,000 volumes (this at a time when the largest library in Christian Europe housed a mere 400 manuscripts). 

Hrowsitha of Gandersheim, a German canoness under the Emperor Otto I described the city as the 'brilliant ornament of the world' shining in the west. Perhaps she had seen the city at night. The streets were well-paved and public lanterns provided illumination. 

At night in modern Cordoba, the one Arabic bath and the many shops are closed (no where near the number of ten thousand). But the streets are certainly lit up. One can get a feeling, if not an archaic echoing of the what it must have been like to visit the great 'ornament of the world'. It is said that when London was a dark city of muddy streets, Cordoba shone.

The Moors introduced citrus fruits to what is now Southern Spain as well as rice. They were the first to perfect irrigation in agriculture, allowing the dry dessert lands to become fertile fields of abundance. They were ahead of Europe in the sciences and math, philosophy and literature. Deodorant and perfume were first introduced in al-Andalus. 

Sadly, the Golden Age, like so many in humanity's history came to an end. By the eleventh century, warring factions within the Moorish community weakened and tore up the great Andalusian world of tolerance, culture and peace. Like the Vandals who had fallen before them, they too were plagued with civil strife and corruption. Cordoba would suffer. King Ferdinand III, after a siege of several months took control in the thirteenth century.

'Flamenco Fountain' - Alcazar de los Reyes Cristianos

In the south, along the banks of the river, you can find the great former palace-fortress of the Catholic Monarchs, the Alcazar de los Reyes Cristianos. In the day, for the tourists, it is a lovely, tranquil garden to visit. Despite the piped-in world music, there is a fountain to sit beside in the shadow of leaves. You can smell the lovely olive trees in the noon-day heat.

However, when you return at night with your ticket, you are plunged into another experience.

First, you watch a light show displayed on the interior walls of the castle courtyard, showing the history of Cordoba with accompanying music. Following this, you are treated to a fountain show. There are three fountains with the water dancing to the rhythm of the Moorish tunes of al-Andalus, the Medieval flutes and strings of Medieval Spain and the Flamenco guitar of modern times.

Though there is an aspect of kitsch involved, it never feels fully tacky. In a way you can appreciate the diversity of such a lost world. Today, most European cities are centres of multi-culturalism. Cordoba was one of the true firsts, whether through policies of tolerance (the Muslims of al-Andalus were accepting of the peoples of 'the book' meaning Jews and Christians could live and worship as they pleased) or its history. 

The aura of times past may have a resonating charm. Still at night, there is the atmosphere of relief from the sun. In many countries throughout Europe, children are fast asleep by midnight. In Cordoba, because of the mid-summer sun, many families take a siesta. Shops are closed, only a few places are open to satisfy and placate the tourists. By four or five, they re-open. This means, people are still wide-awake at midnight. The children too, many of them playing in the fountains throughout the city.

As for the bars, they stay open late. But it is never feels wild. Patrons sit and drink outside, smoking their cigarettes, eating their tapas. They down their cool wines and beers. They converse.

For me Cordoba is suited for night. Its glory days are past, good memories within the nocturnal walls and along the streets.

In a sense, history is a story of ghosts. The old heroes, the great victories, the wondrous libraries and the downfalls all belong to the dust, their weight on our lives is no more than just a wonderful, passing if not entertaining tale, a distraction really.

In the place where armies met, there are houses and suburbs.

In the old Jewish quarter, a statue of Maimonides rests. In front of him passes the slap of sandals, the chatter of voices, the snapping of pictures. Women with sun bronzed shoulders go by with their boyfriends. They hold hands, they point at something interesting. In a few minutes they will have a cerveza at the tavern around the corner and go off to the shops to buy a scarf for her, some local olive oil or sherry for him. 

At night, it can only be different because of the dream of the past is more alive. With enough imagination and wonder, you can feel a tremble there in your skin, as if remembering a life you might have lived. To stand on the Roman bridge and look towards the city, to see the ancient pontoons still holding up a legacy, the Catholic church facade of the converted Mezquita, the distant tower of the Alcazar and of course, the nearby tanned skin of an Andalusian beauty one might feel time to be a hopeless illusion, a tool we try to tell ourselves is useful when really it distracts us from the symbiotic beauty of existence. How everything is all at once and never quite real.

Yes, how Cordoba is a symbol of what is, what remains and what isn't.

Meeting the Dislexyc Grapes

My last night in Cordoba I really didn't know what I was going to do. I had spent many of my evenings wandering the city, crossing and re-crossing the river using the old Roman bridge, passing through the park where locals walked their dogs and socialized. Beyond that, I had my ample share of paella and tapas, wine and cerveza and if I needed entertainment, there was a young violinist playing Bach and popular international pieces nightly by the triumphal arch. 

I had visited the famous Alcazar de los Reyes Cristianos for the elegant, if not touristy fountain display. And I spent the latter parts of my evenings down at the Plaza de Tendillas, my feet in the fountain, drinking beer, watching the kids skip and jump and splash, and the visiting university athletes drink from large Amstel bottles.  

Puta caliente!

The last night was also the hottest. At quarter to nine, it was 43 degrees C. I shook my head, snapped a picture and wandered down the old streets of the eastern quarter, slowly making my way back to the bridge for one last sultry, sunset glimpse of Cordoba. I wiped the sweat once more from my neck, airing out my shirt for the fifteenth time. Certainly the guidebook had advised against traveling in July and August. But I figured there would be less tourists and I was right. I suffered in the night, I sweated and drank umpteen bottles of water but the crowds were small in the streets. Manageable, really. And for me that  was a plus. Less people to deal with. At the Mezquita, the famous Mosque of the 8th century, now converted into a Catholic Church, there were spaces of relative peace. Tourists held up their digital cameras but you could take pictures of the pillars and the beauty without knocking elbows.

Overall, I never once felt like I was jostling with others as I had in Madrid's more bustling plazas. The squares of Cordoba were comparably quiet and at night, beyond the babbling of the fountains, one could hear the moderate hum of conversation and giggles of children. 

I stayed in the old part of the city above a local restaurant. My host and hostess owned the establishment where they served middle eastern fare and I spent four out of my six nights dining and drinking there. Following my last walk through the city, making sure to avoid the street of brothels, I found myself back at the tavern. 

My host, welcomed me, shaking my hand, a cigarette in his other. He was a slim, bearded Turkish man with long curly, black locks who spoke only his native tongue and Spanish. Besides the restaurant, he was a locally-famous flamenco musician who fused the world of Istanbul with Andalusian. I practiced my Spanish with him the first night I arrived and even sat with him and his friends and the server, Marie's friends. 

It was in the tavern three nights previous that I met Beatriz. I'm sure I might still be there if an obstructing angel hadn't gotten in the way. It was around ten o'clock. After a plate of couscous, I was drinking my third beer when she arrived on bike, visiting her friend. Marie and her chatted and then she sat with me. Beatriz knew a little bit of English and I enough Spanish. I learned a bit more with her help but mostly my impromptu lessons were forgotten. I enjoyed far too much gazing into her Andalusian, almond eyes. Her knee knocked against mine now and then and a  cursory, shoulder-length strand of black hair kept falling away from its place behind her ear. Her cheeks were high and her lips lovely. I loved watching her speak Spanish.

In our Spanglish we talked about music; I said I played and I recorded some songs while living in Vancouver. I was also writing two books, one about my childhood, the other a verse novel about an Austrian winemaker that falls in love with five women (cinco mujeres). She seemed impressed. As for me, I nervously flipped through the pages of my Spanish phrasebook to find the right words. I remembered what I could.

It seemed that anyone else who might join our conversation was only interrupting or annoying us. I wanted to learn more about her. She was a pharmacist and worked long weeks. That weekend, a three day holiday. She had tomorrow, the Monday off. I asked for her email address. "I don't do email," she said to me. "Then your phone number?" I responded.

I passed my pen and journal over to her and she took them with her light-olive hands. She jotted her number down and told me to call her.

"I'll do my best. I want you to be my personal tour guide."

And I did try. I tried to call her the next day. I went to several pay phones but they wouldn't work. One stole my euro, the other kept spitting my money back out, the metallic clink of rejection causing me several times to slam down the pink T-mobile receiver in disgust and frustration. 

What could I do? I didn't have a cell phone so I couldn't call her that way. And that night, both my host and hostess didn't return to their apartment so I had no to ask for their phone. I figured it wasn't meant to be and left it at that. My romantic side was effectively invaded by the practical one and all my fantasies of a mid-vacation tryst vanished into the banality of acceptance.

So it was interesting to meet Marie's boyfriend tonight, my last night in Cordoba. The Turkish man promptly introduced us, asked if I was hungry (I was fine) and went back to the kitchen, probably to prepare some more couscous. 

Marie's boyfriend and I sat outside in the heat, the sky darkening, the synthetic orange glow of lights glowing sadly, drably from their wall lanterns. We drank beer. He knew a little English but he was impressed with how much Spanish I had picked up in the last two weeks. 

He also asked about Beatriz. I told him: tell her I did my best but the phones in Spain don't like me. I wanted to say that the first night I met her I could have kissed her right then and there but it was getting late and we were both tired. I also wanted to say she had the kindest and most beautiful face I had seen since my arrival. But I wasn't proficient enough for such poetics. Ella no tiene correo electrónico y no tiene un teléfono celular (She didn't have email and I didn't have a cell phone.) It was fate, yes and my obstructing angel.

It was then that two guys, one of them on bike pulled up. They spoke the rapido Spanish of the south with Marie's boyfriend and when I tried to offer my basic conversation, they said it was okay if I wanted to speak English with them. My eyebrows jumped up. Wow, actually English-speakers. I had encountered one or two on my travels in Spain.

They were hungry and we went inside the tavern so they could order some couscous. Joining them, I had another beer as did they. They asked where I was from, what I was doing in Spain. Mostly traveling and wandering, I explained. Brandan had spent some time in Dublin which explained his distinct English-Irish accent and when he said 'fuck' he reminded me of Colin Ferrel in In Bruges. As for Andrés, he had a more American-sounding accent.

They ate pretty quickly when their food arrived. I commented on their appetite. 

"Well, we're high," Brandan said smiling, nodding his head, his mop of curls shaking. 

I chuckled. "Well, I'm drunk."

And the conversation continued on. They told me they were part of a band. What was the band called?

"Dyslexic Grapes" Andrés proudly announced.

I nearly shit myself laughing. It wasn't so much that it was funny but it was just the best name of a band I had ever heard. It was the kind of brilliance best associated with a Monty Python skit. And because it was so brilliant, I found it humorous. 

Then, when Brandan slid a sticker of their band logo across the table I started cracking up again: they reversed the 'i' and 'y' of their band name to enhance the beauty and irony of it all - Dislexyc Grapes. (I proudly wear this sticker on my notebook computer).

We had more beer and chatted for awhile, mentioning bands we liked, books we read. I told him Spain attracted me because of the literature - Lorca, Cernuda, Salinas, Aleixandre and so forth.

As for philosophies, we shared them. The idea of success, for instance, being famous. They claimed they just wanted to party and have a good time. I confessed my whole trip was a means of just having a good time, but also escape, getting away from the locked-in self I was back in Canada. I could have spent the summer working my job, doing the same thing but I decided to take a risk. And it paid off. I could meet people like Andrés and Brandan and that made my vacation more of an experience than just a distraction. 

Marie wanted to close up the bar. We were the last to leave so we paid our share and headed out. Branden grabbed his bike and we walked through the late night streets of Cordoba. They still wanted to drink and so did I. I had a train to catch in the morning (the infamous Renfe episode related in a late August blog) but it was only one a.m. and with the heat and the fan in my room that hardly kept me cool, the chances of falling asleep, no matter what, were relatively slim. Another beer or so and then bed or whatever.

We strolled along the Calle Claudio Marcelo, passing below the old Roman monument from a forgotten century. I had seen the Seneca statue and fountain in my wanderings and I knew this city's history stretched further back than the Moors of Abd al-Rahman I's time. But it was interesting, being in such a historically important place, entering the vast square of the Place de Corredera, a place reminiscent of Madrid Plaza de Mayor to have Andrés comment on how sick he was of his hometown. 

My eyebrows jumped up again. Why was that?

He wiped the brown hair falling low over his brow. "It's always the same people, the same crowds, the same things." He said. "The tourists and the flamenco. The government puts all the money into promoting flamenco. All the arts grants of the south go to flamenco. And I don't mind flamenco. I think it is good, but there is more to Spanish music than flamenco."

I nodded. I felt the same about Canadian literature. It was always old women writing about the prairies or another story by Alice Munro about the distance between a woman and a man in marriage. If not that, some story about immigrants in Toronto who happened to be from Pakistan or India.

And like Andrés, I didn't really mind some of it, but I understood. Money always goes towards enhancing the cultural stereotype so when the tourists arrive, they can find their preconceived notions easily and feel satisfied in their search. And I suppose every country is guilty of allowing their iconic image of themselves to take centre stage in tourism booking offices. Germans have Bavaria and bratwurst, the Dutch have Zeeland and the windmills and the French Paris, the Eiffel Tower and the idea of Parisian, Bohemian Romance. Complexity of culture is hard to sell.

I also mentioned that I self-published a book. Andrés said he wanted to read my book.

We stopped for beers in a small bar on the far south-west corner of the square. The crowds here too were spare, the conversations, like the candles on the tables, almost out. It was only a matter of time before this place would close up. We stood outside at a tall wooden table. I had my tenth beer of the night. After my failed attempt at smoking marijuana ("you're not inhaling right, man..." Brandan cautioned, "it's good shit, don't waste it..."), Andrés asked if I wanted to hear some of their music. Of course, I said coughing. 

I listened and was surprised at how amazing it was. While eating couscous earlier, Branden moaned he wasn't a good drummer. But with the over-sized earphones on my head, listening to the first track of their music on his small mp3 player I had to think otherwise. I wasn't prepared for how good they were.

I loved it. The square disappeared, the night was less intense in terms of heat. Of course, their music was nowhere (thankfully) near flamenco in style. I couldn't quite put my finger on it but I know it was incredible. They had their own distinct style though I could hear some blues and alternative music flowing through the guitar riffs and drum beats. It wasn't typical of anything but it was playful like their band name.

But sadly, the beer had to be consumed because the small bar (really almost a closet with alcohol, beer kegs and a bathroom) too was closing. I walked with Andrés and Brandan back to my host and hostess' apartment. The heat hadn't really let off and I was eternally thirsty. I shook their hands above the wet, hosed-down streets, regretting that I had not met them earlier in the week. I would have loved playing guitar with them, jamming with the Dislexyc Grapes.

For those of you read this, I highly recommend them. Check out the link above. And though I have no Spanish beer on hand, I raise a glass of Dutch jenever to them and their future success or however they want their recognition. To Andrés and Brandan.

And can't forget, Beatriz, wherever she might be, the Cordovan beauty that got away and didn't believe in email.

Brandan y Andrés