Triptych landed (II): The roses
Keeping your feet on the ground is terrifying. It's scary because reality is a present with over forty wars, on a planet where 1% of humans accumulate almost half of the economic wealth, and in a country where only 1% of the population reads poetry. Nevertheless, gravity compels us to do so. Hopping on tiptoes or on one foot, with one leg in the air, and pretending it's all by chance or the will of gods we don't believe in, we can achieve the illusion of flight. It is in contact with the Earth's crust, where 40% of insect species are already endangered, that we will find a kind of immaterial and intangible reward: grounded and connected, we will feel part of something that has the possibility of moving.
The first scene takes place in a poetry and electronics workshop with minors from the Es Pinaret socio-educational center. We bring them instruments they can play, microphones to record their voices, and the poem Gaspar Hauser no.2, by Blai Bonet. The objective is for a group of boys and girls who are children deprived of their liberty to deconstruct Blai's poem and create a new one, which resonates and dances with their pain, their guilt, their incomprehension, their fear, and their desire for a future, behind the metaphorical bars of a real prison. They read, at first with grimaces because they know very little or no Catalan, “everyone be the owner of their own life”; they gain confidence with the verse that says “let no one put their name under an act they are forced to do”, and they ponder it; until they dare to use intonation and gesture, when they reach the verse where Blai states that “ no man is authorized to stop being beauty”. In the end, they all want to say “mother to their mother” aloud, singing. In the end: a choral rhapsody, laughter, high-fives, and applause, many mixed sensations, and sparks of future in the eyes of children who, hurt, despised, helpless, were straying through the paths of pain and evil. The educators who, with vocation and professionalism, dedicate body and soul to the cursed children, were silenced, laughed, and cried: they hadn't seen the proposal to work on this poem by Blai very clearly; we went there convinced that if we celebrate a poet, we should always do so keeping in mind the material, the context, the intention of his poetry.
” with the verses where “of the guests of the land, man is still / the only one who debases him”. I intone the sibilant words of In the third scene, the Institut d’Estudis Baleàrics invites me to give voice to the poems of Joan Alcover. As someone who is only a Mallorcan by adoption, the fact that I am cited on such a solemn occasion makes me very nervous: I want to take advantage of the presence of some political representatives who do not represent me, to select Alcover’s most critical and combative texts, and to celebrate his legacy in such a way that only those who truly honor him feel part of the celebration. The responsibility overwhelms me, and I mix “the poets who sing of tragedy” with the verses where “of the guests of the land, man is still / the only one who debases it”. I intone the sibylline words of La Balanguera, remembering that yesterday through the roots, today through the stems, and tomorrow through the wilting rose petals are the same thing, they live at the same time (on the same Earth) – and that poetry exists so that we do not forget it.