More mothers (a tanka)

Maruja, this is the poem I told you about yesterday. The one that steals from you the word "ajedrez". It was a question of syllable count, nothing personal (and I know your living room does have books).

Tankas are a type of poem, historically earlier than the haiku, with a syllable count 5-7-5-7-7. I have composed a handful of those.They're easier than haikus but it's necessary to consider very carefully if you really, trully need the two extra lines. 

Madre moderna:
un colegio bilingüe,
ajedrez, tenis.
En el salón sin libros,
colección de bonsais. 

A modern mother:
Bilingual education,
chess, sports and ballet.
In the book-less living-room,
a collection of bonsais.

 

Mothers to the rescue!

I have the feeling that something's connecting a certain Poet and me.

Last night I had to chase a blackbird out of my living-room. The stupid thing wouldn't leave the room: chased towards a door it would perch on top of furniture. This went on for about half an hour, until I could let a piece of cloth fall on it and I left it outside in the garden.

This morning I could hear an extremely loud chirping. Not a song. Eek-eek. It was very obvious that it was a baby blackbird saying it was hungry: that was why last night's bird wouldn't go. She couldn't leave her baby behind. It took a long search to find the wee one hidden behind a pile of books. Two thirds grown, all the adult feathers on the wings but not yet on the body. It was very easy to wrap it on the same cloth and throw it out on the quietest corner in the garden. A very black blackbird (a male, therefore) immediately flew to the center of the garden and sang very fast and very loud. In a matter of seconds, at least three birds had taken the baby with them, helping it into a bush so that it could hide. I didn't know that territorial animals could be so cooperative.

Classical haiku material.

Catorce madres:
Mirlas al rescate
del pollito caído.

Fourteen mothers:
blackbirds come to the rescue
of the fallen chick.

a two-line haiku

I haven't written a two-line haiku in ages. Ages. I would really appreciate opinions on this one (I don't know if it's too flat and dry, rather than bleak as I want it to be). It is partly inspired in a love poem by Juliet Wilson.

Jamás pudimos compartir musa.
Ni cama tampoco.

We could never have shared a muse.
Or a bed, either.

 

New York??

It's not that I'm the biggest expert on New York City; far from it. But yesterday I was shocked (culture-shocked, of course) when I was driving, listening to the radio, and I heard a truly absurd description of New York in a Spanish pop song. The song was good enough in itself, a bittersweet complaint from a man who has left his life in Spain behind in order to go and live in NYC with the woman he loves. The chorus says: 

Iré tan pronto como pueda donde hablen español
estoy viajando, como un tonto que ha llegado a Nueva York
Hay mil tiendas de pistolas, rascacielos de cartón,
y la verdad es que tuve miedo en el avión

I'll go as soon as possible somewhere where people speak in Spanish,
I'm travelling, like a fool in NYC
there are thousands of gun dealers, cardboard skyscrapers,
and the truth is, I was afraid during the flight.

Erm... I didn't see a single gun/weapons shop in my stay in town and I think it's not easy to buy weapons in New York State. Besides, it is obvious to anyone who has spend more than an hour in New York that all you have to do to find people who speak Spanish as a native language is maybe go to the north of Manhattan. It's amazing what people will assume when they apply a stereotype to a whole country.

 

Happy birthday, Bono

Phew, talk about a sense of loss. Today is the birthday of one of the heroes of my adolescence, Bono, the U2 singer. The thing is, I had a very late adolescence. U2 appeared when I was three years-old. They started to be very good when I was about ten. I would have loved them had someone introduced them to me, but since my musical tastes were dictated by my father and TV, and none of them was a U2 fan, I didn't even knew they existed. What with one thing and another, I survived for 17 years or so without U2. I became obsessed with them in the way only people in their early teens should be allowed to, and somewhere between me overcoming my crush on three of the band members, and Bono losing his voice (some time near his 40th birthday he woke up sounding as if he had a cold and it hasn't improved ever since), and the band losing track of why there were good in the first place, it's not that I don't like them any more, but that I don't like anything they've done in ten years. I do listen to the old songs. 

Probably the most significant thing I can say is that as I take a look to an online discography, I can't find a song, that I really feel like posting here as if it was poetry. Most of them don't work when read, they suffer from the "brilliant-line-lost-in-mediocre-song" syndrome, and all the best lines are overused. As I read I find the lyrics of a song I didn't like very much, back then. Now that I read the lyrics they seem to be spoken by one of those very cruel lovers that get tired of you but don't say so, leaving you waiting for a reassurance or a break-up that never come. Enjoy.  

Haven't seen you in quite a while
I was down the hall, just passing time.
Last time we met it was a low-lit room
We were as close together as a bride and groom.
We ate the food, we drank the wine
Everybody having a good time except you.
You were talking about the end of the world.

I took the money, I spiked your drink
You miss too much these days if you stop to think.
You led me on with those innocent eyes
And you know I love the element of surprise.
In the garden I was playing the tart
I kissed your lips and broke your heart.
You, you were acting like it was the end of the world.

In my dream, I was drowning my sorrows
But my sorrows they'd learned to swim
Surrounding me, going down on me
Spilling over the brim
Waves of regret and waves of joy.
I reached out for the one I tried to destroy.
You, you said you'd wait till the end of the world.

 

Banks and bars

The autobiographical bit: there is actually a bank in the place where a café used to be. But I have lovely memories attached to the place and I can't translate my sense of loss into a haiku. 

En tu bar favorito
el que yo odiaba
han abierto otro banco.

A new bank has opened
in your favourite bar,
the one I used to hate.

Love and statistics

In a previous Seville bloggers meet, Zifra and Luis taught me The Prisoner's Dilemma. In the most recent one, Zifra made me think again about human relations in challenging ways. 

When a couple hugged I said that the more happy couples are there in the world, the more statistically probable it is that single people will end up in a happy couple themselves. Zifra, who happens to be a Math professor, said I was wrong: the more couples there are, the less chances single people have of ending up in a couple because there are less singles available. Who is right?

Both of us are because we were talking about different things. Zifra referred to available, single people: evidently, in a world with plenty of singles it is easier to find a partner. But I was not talking about simply pairing up: I believed that every happy couple is a small piece of evidence of the existence of love. The more loving couples there are, the likeliest it is that true love exists. Zifra never said a word about love, though...

Sevilla: Blogger's Meet, Ninth Edition.

As on a previous occasion, an excepcional bilingual post because this is mostly of interest to local readers but I can't bring myself to make it Spanish only. Scroll down for the English version.

Ayer asistí a la Novena Zifras y Letras, nombre que damos a las reuniones de blogueros de Sevilla porque se convocan en el blog de Zifra. Esta vez había dos convocatorias, día y noche, y se daba por hecho que los mañaneros iríamos a las dos. Lo curioso de una quedada de blogueros como ésta es que lo único que, en principio, todos tenemos en común, es entusiasmo por un tema concreto, entusiasmo bastante como para tener la paciencia de escribir gratis sobre el tema, y por otro lado, exhibicionismo. Si juntas a un montón de gente que es inteligente, entusiasta y exhibicionista es como estar en una fiesta de Hollywood, pero sin la neurosis de la competición por el próximo contrato. Ayer estaba la gente especialmente inspirada y todos teníamos complejo de Oscar Wilde. ¿A quién le damos el premio a la frase más lapidaria?

En fin. Quedada diurna: llego tarde, con Tulio, que conoce a varios pero nunca ha ido a una quedada. Cervecería Macarena: Allí nos esperan Zifra, RaveN, marh (aún sin blog) y Maruja. Luego llegan Hamlet, Luis Rull y la chica que deja que lo acompañe, que está más guapa de lo que yo la recordaba, que ya era mucho. Conversaciones sobre navajas: la de Maruja es más grande pero la mía es más práctica. Sobre tiro con arco: resulta que para practicarlo hay que hacer un ejercicio que te cambia de sitio un músculo del brazo. Ayyyy qué repelús, prefiero seguir practicando los brazos de serpiente. Tulio ha ido de caza una vez en su vida porque hay afición en su familia, y el fantasma de una codorniz que mató aún le persigue. Pobrecito. Se desahoga llamándome fenicia porque estoy vendiendo pendientes. Maruja se va a comer a su casa, prometiendo que vuelve después de comer. Mientras, hay pelea por su mechero, porque es naranja...

Le enseño a Tulio y RaveN qué es el Masmoudi de dos dum (es un ritmo de danza oriental) con una demostración práctica. Zifra dice que la realidad lo supera. Vamos a comer a donde dicen RaveN y Marh. Se equivocan de calle: hemos dado la vuelta a dos barriadas y creado el Trekking y Letras. Se nos unen el Arcángel y Guille. Nos ponemos púos de comer y empezamos a hablar de blogs, un poco, no mucho. De trolls, de Menéame. Decidimos que si son grandes, verdes, y no son dulces, entonces son plátanos macho. Alguien dice "Hay gente muy cochina que son muy guays". No, yo tampoco lo entiendo. Pasamos revista a grándes éxitos de los 80, cuando los presentes teníamos entre 5 y 15 años. Intento convencer a Eva de que se decida a bailar danza oriental ya.

El mendigo que llega y nos dice algo así como que es un día precioso. Se pone a cantar. Cuando acaba, dice que "como nos ha visto así en familia, pues se ha dirigido al cabeza de familia". ¿alguien adivina a quién se refería?

Empezamos a decaer, el calor no perdona. Tetería, cachimbas, siesteo, más frases lapidarias. Casi todos se dispersan, y sólo RaveN, marh, Tulio y yo nos vamos al Utopía. Pufs, más siesta. Y así llegamos a la segunda convocatoria.

Cuando los cuatro Utópicos volvemos a la Cervecería Macarena, ya estaban allí Marcos, Pablo, uno que toma servesita y Coquevas. No sé si fue Coque o quién, que se juntó con Tulio y sacaron a relucir vena friki: recitadores de Les Luthiers. Se pusieron a hablar en su idioma particular y tuvimos que dejarlos solos hasta que se calmaron. Después, la inevitable conversación sobre Lost. ¿por qué los fans de otras series hablan de la serie y los fans de Lost sólo hablan de cuándo van a poder ver más capítulos? ¡Son adictos peligrosos!

Va llegando tanta gente que pierdo la cuenta. Nos disgregamos en grupitos pequeños: los que hablan en un extraño idioma que creo que es linusero, los que han estudiado letras, los que se conocen fuera de la blogosfera. Me quedo fascinada por la acompañante de un bloguero: todos los niños tienen terrores, y uno de los míos cuando chica eran las alergias. Soy hija de médico y de un alérgico a mi fruta favorita, así que pensaba en la posibilidad de que alguien pudiera ser alérgico a todo. Esta chica es alérgica (creo) al contacto de todos los metales y todos los animales. Dice que la reacción cutánea a casi todo se llama "síndrome de piel de princesa". Google no lo sabe. Es como si me hubieran dicho que verdaderamente existen los monstruos de debajo de la cama .

Tardamos un siglo en ir a cenar porque somos casi treinta. Zifra me dice que necesitan un líder y creo que me toca: me junto demasiado con RaveN, ¿esperan de mí la misma decisión? RaveN nos busca dónde cenar. Mientras tanto, lesiono sin querer a JaMaRiEr pero me perdona y se pone a hacernos trucos de magia a Coque, a Maruja y a mí. ¡Le salen muy bien! A RaveN le da envidia y se pone a hacer figuritas con globos (que también le salen muy bien, no se me vaya a poner celoso).

Cenamos por fin. Los recitadores de Les Luthiers se ponen a cantar algo que no es de Les Luthiers pero lo parece sobre uno que quiere ser cura. Panda frikis. Encima se ponen a hablar del Día de la Toalla y a hacer chistes de autoestopista galáctico. Huyo de una conversación sobre el estado de la Universidad española...

y aterrizamos en La Caja Negra, un bar demasiado pequeño para bailar y demasiado ruidoso para hacer otra cosa. Digo que me voy y alguien que no nombraré me hace un chantaje emocional digno de una mujer, y además estoy en medio de un abrazo de oso colectivo, así que me quedo. Nos vamos a Alamey, que tiene unos sofas larguíiiiiiiiisimos. Resulta que la chica de piel de princesa también baila la danza del vientre. Uau. La gente se ha ido marchando poco a poco, a goteo. Cuando yo me voy, quedan menos de diez personas, todas diciendo que se irán enseguida.

La próxima, ¿cuándo?

 

*  *  *  *   

Yesterday I attended the Ninth Zifras y Letras, the name we give to Seville blogguer's meets because they are announced in Zifra's blog. This time there were two meets, day and night, and it was taken for granted that lunch people would go to the dinner. The funny thing about a blogger's meet is that the only thing we had in common, to start with, was enough enthusiasm about one topic to be willing to write about it for free, and exhibitionism. If you get together a lot of intellingent, enthusiastic and exhibitionist people, it's like being at a Hollywod party but without the neurosis of competition for the next big role.  Yesteerday everyone was especially inspired and everyone wanted to be Oscar Wilde. ¿Who gets the prize for the wittiest punchline?

Anyway. Day Meet: I get there late, with Tulio, who knows some people but hasn't been to any previous Z & L. Cervecería Macarena: There we find Zifra, RaveN, marh (not a blogger -yet) and Maruja. Later, Hamlet, Luis Rull and the girl who lets him follow her around. She's prettier than I remembered, and that's a lot. Conversation on knives (the sort that bends on itself and you can carry on yourself) Maruja's is the biggest but mine is so practical. On shooting with a bow & arrows: it turns out that to have to do some exercises to change the natural position of a muscle in your upper arms. Eeek, I'd rather keep doing snake arms, thank you.  Tulio has gone hunting once in his life and the ghost of the partridge he killed still haunts him. Poor little dear.  He takes out the stress on me, calling me phenician because I'm selling jewellery. Maruja leaves and promises she'lll come back in the evening. There's a bit of a row about her lighter, because it's orange...

I show Tulio and RaveN what's a Masmoudi and why it is great (it's a belly dance rhythm) with a practical demonstration. Zifra says we're weirder than any fiction. We go for lunch to the place recommended by RaveN y Marh, but they get lost: we go all the way around a whoe neighborhood, inventing Trekking and Letras. Arcángel and Guille join us. We eat loads and loads of nice food and we start talking about blogs, but not too much. Trolls, Menéame. We review Greatest Hits from the Eighties, when all present were 5 to 15 years old. I try to convince Eva that she should try start bellydancing ASAP. 

A beggar comes and sings to us. When he finishes, he says that he thought it appropriate to sing to the head of the family. ¿guess who he meant?

Everyone's sleepy, it's too hot. We go to a Moroccan-themed tearoom, with those funny water-filled smoking things. More laughs. Nearly everyone leaves; only RaveN, marh, Tulio and me go to Utopía. And so we get to the evening meet. 

When we four Utopians get back to Cervecería Macarena, Marcos, Pablo, servesita and Coquevas were already there. Maybe it was Coque, I'm not sure, joined Tulio and they sang Les Luthiers songs for a while. Later, they had the obligatory Lost conversation. ¿Why fans of other shows talk about the show, but Lost fans talk about when they'll be able to watch new installements? ¡They dangerous addicts!

So many people arrive that I lose count. People dissolve into small groups: the ones who talk weird foreign languages that sound, I think, like Linux; the ones that know each other from outside the blogosphere; the ones that have studied Humanities. I'm fascinated by a blogger's friend: all small childrne have terrors, and of of mine as a little one was allergies. My mother's a doctor and my father's allergic to my favourite fruit, so I used to think about the possibility of somone who was allergic to everything. This girl is, I think, allergic to the touch of all metals, and all animals. She says that the skin reaction to nearly everything is called "princess skin syndrome". Google doesn't know a word about it.  I feel as if I had found out that there actually are monsters under the bed.

We take forever to figure out where we're going to have dinner. Zifra wants me to choose: I'm spending too much time with RaveN and they want me to be like him. RaveN eventually finds us a Mexican. Meanwhile, I inadvertently kick JaMaRiEr, but he forgives me and does some magic tricks for Coque, Maruja and me. ¡He's good! RaveN is envious and makes a few ballon animals. (he is very good at that, I must say, so he doesn't get jealous) 

We eat dinner at last. The Les Luthiers fans are singing similar songs about someone who wants to be a priest, and then they talk about Towel Day. What a bunch of geeks. I run away from a conversation on the state of Spanish Universities...

and we land in the Black Box, a bar too small for dancing and too noisy for anything else. When I say I'm leaving, someone I won't mention gives me emotional blackmail as good as a woman's, and then I'm in the center of a group hug, so I have to stay. We go to the Alamey, which has looooooong sofas. It turns out Princess-Skin girl also bellydances. Yay! 

People have been leaving in twos and threes. When I go, there's less than ten people left, and all are saying they'll leave very soon.  

So, when shall we all meet again?

And that's a beginning

Uruguayan poet Mario Benedetti occasionally includes aphorisms among the poems in his books. Since he coms from a country that suffered a coup d’état and subsequent miliary dictatorship, quite a few of his works are on torture. I remember reading this as a teenager:

Un torturador no se redime suicidándose. Pero algo es algo.

A torturer cannot redeem himself through suicide. But it’s a beginning.

I remember that little epigram, if you can call it such, every time the news say that another bastard has killed himself, or tried to, after killing a woman that used to love him. 28 dead women in Spain so far in 2006. That’s an average of one every four days and twelve hours. Half the aggressors attempted suicide. Four have succeeded, one of them last night. I’m sorry I can’t direct you to a link. Blind rage is a lot faster than Google.

Pretty flowers

This baby probably is my most classically-themed poem.

Snowdrops on the ground,
White lilies on pots:
Will you live forty-two months?

Azahar en la rama,
camelia en un jarrón:
¿vais a vivir cuarenta y dos meses?

Work in progress

Edited to add Jose Angel 's suggestion. 

Frágil
Vulnerable
Delicado
Endeble
Desvalido
Débil

Qué asco de diccionario

Demasiados sinónimos para mi cobardía.

Vulnerable
Delicate
Weak
Brittle
Fragile
Feeble

Fucking Thesaurus

Too many synonyms for my cowardice.

Back catalogue

One of the saddest characteristics of modern literature is that we are always in search of novelty and trends, turning books into a commodity very similar to fashion. I don't refer just to best-sellers: books are allowed a very brief time on bookshop's shelves, especially in big chain stores.

I'm happy to see that one huge chain store is doing something about it. Waterstones is adapting its best-of, the-house-recommends, three-for-two method to the interests of readers and publishing houses, because they have selected 30 little-know, relatively old books to highlight their back catalogue. The selection was done by asking the company's sellers, and therefore it is unavoidably biased towards books originally in English. Here it is:

1 Revenge Of The Lawn by Richard Brautigan
2 What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver
3 Death and The Penguin by Andrey Kurkov
4 The Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies
5 The Dark Is Rising Sequence by Susan Cooper
6 Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry by BS Johnson
7 Hunger by Knut Hamsun
8 Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut
9 Dry Bones by Richard Beard
10 Mirror Lake by Thomas Christopher Greene
11 Blackbird House by Alice Hoffman
12 Journey By Moonlight by Antal Szerb
13 Too Loud A Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal
14 Trip To The Stars by Nicholas Christopher
15 Daughter Of The Forest by Juliet Marillier
16 Perdido Street Station by China Mieville
17 Woman On The Edge Of Time by Marge Piercy
18 Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn
19 The Pursuit Of Alice Thrift by Elinor Lipman
20 Drama City by George Pelecanos
21 Wooden Sea by Jonathan Carroll
22 The Stone Carvers by Jane Urquhart
23 Empire Falls by Richard Russo
24 Ridley Walker by Russell Hoban
25 Radetzky March by Joseph Roth
26 Double by José Saramago
27 Don't Look Back by Karin Fossum
28 Mists Of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
29 Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

I don't know if these books are good (I have only read one of them), and I don't much like the best-of method. But in my experience, people will buy anything that's recommended in big enough and bright enough lettering, and anything done to publicise books is a good thing.  

 

John Donne

I can’t believe I haven’t written anything about John Donne since I started to blog from this location. A friend of mine has recently discovered him and that's an excuse as good as any other to post this translation.

Like some Spanish writers of Post-Renaissance literature, Donne wrote both love poetry and religious poetry. I prefer his love poetry, although there is a sonnet (ah, the religious sonnet, what a wonderful oxymoron) that compares his heart to a walled city and God to the army that has a siege on it, and faith with the ram that breaks the city walls. Have you seen The Return of the King, the third movie of the Lord of the Rings trilogy? Can you see the leap of imagination needed to imagine that the love of God is like the Orcs and their catapults trying to conquer the city… for the city’s own good? His love poetry can share that same intensity.

John Donne is not well known in Spain; it’s unavoidable, perhaps. His violent metaphors are hard to understand in English, so translation is nightmarish at times. I cannot do John Donne justice, mostly because I have no ability to rhyme, so I’ve made an adaptation into free verse. No rhyme at all is better than bad rhyme. I have picked this poem because it is sentimental, and the same time restrained, so it appeals to me a lot (surprise, surprise). You can read it in English here.

El Funeral.
Vienes a amortajarme. No rompas,
no cuestiones
la pulsera de pelo que corona mi mano.
No toques el misterio,
el signo,
no lo toques.
Es mi alma, un alma externa,
para sustituir la que se ha ido.
Ahora controla mi cuerpo.
Ahora ya tiene un imperio.
Ahora me salvará.

Mi mente ya no existe,
los músculos no han muerto.
Los pelos será nervios
entrelazadamente
pues no en vano crecían en mejor cabeza.
Y me recompondrán.
Eso, si ella no buscaba
dejarme aún más claro su no,
mi dolor encadenado,
los grilletes de pelo de mi amor prisionero.

Qué importa su intención.
Qué más da ella. Enterradlo.
Si me hizo mártir de amor,
cualquiera que lo vea se hará hereje,
idólatra de estas reliquias.
Y si me dio la humildad
para darle el mérito de todo lo que hice,
tendré el coraje.
Nunca la poseí. Algo suyo poseerá mi tumba.

Book Day

I don't have anything to say about Book Day that I haven't said already. I celebrated Book Day yesterday, and received three books: an unexpected children's book with gorgeous illustrations , a detective story set in Shanghai, and the one on which the movie Brokeback Mountain is based.

Yes, too few books. But that is easily solved . *wink*  

 

 

Horror Tanka

I was going to call this "fairy tale tanka" because I like my fairy tales bloody. But that doesn't sound right.

Cuando miras
Debajo de la cama
Y no hay un monstruo
Ten muchísimo cuidado
Mira bajo la almohada.

When you look under the bed
And there's no monster
With extreme care
look under the pillow.

 

 

 

How to locate the Pharmacy Building

The stereotype is that young women are not interested in studying Engineering, or, Sciences unless they are Health Sciences.

My town has a Sciences Campus with most of the sciences and engineering degrees, and I told a friend of mine to go to the Pharmacy School. He got lost and he asked a man for directions. The man told him, "Walk straight ahead until you see a crowd of gorgeous babes".

My friend reported he had no trouble at all locating the building.

Let's say this again

I’m repeating a poem I only posted a month ago, I know. This little baby is, against my custom, sincere. It is maybe the first poem I ever write and don’t destroy in which I use the first person to talk about my own feelings. That’s why I didn’t like it at first and also why I thought it was cliché.

I don't like to give so much interpretation of my own poem, but in case anyone is reading me in it, I don't find this feeling a negative one. Not at all.  

Algo me falta;
Me siento como un ritmo
buscando melodía.

There’s something missing.
I feel I’m a rhythm
in search of a melody.

Unfinished?

This might be part of a cycle, eventually; I don't know if it captures the mood of something loving and gentle but limited and unresolved.

Dos horas aquí.
Verte en esta burbuja
es viajar a un país exótico.

Here for two hours.
Meeting you in this bubble
Like travelling to distant lands.

Lust and Gluttony

Lujuria y gula.

Eres distinto del chocolate
porque ver chocolate no basta
pero no necesito de ti
más que saber que podrías ser mío.

Lust & Gluttony

You're not like chocolate at all
because it is never enough to see chocolate
but I need nothing of you
beyond the certainty you could be mine.

 

A fairy tale of sorts

Maruja has left this in the comments. Just this once, I'm speechless. Let her words (and my translation) speak for themselves.

Había una vez una preciosidad. Sus ricitos morenos guardaban un secreto: cada mechón de su pelo conocía una palabra, y por tanto, su abundante cabellera era toda un diccionario. Ello hacia que fuera dicharachera, y que los demás, lejos de reconocer el poder del verbo, se sintieran abrumados con sus disertaciones. A muchos les daba miedo, y era por ello criticada, pero si alguien se paraba a escuchar despacito quedaba encandilado.

El gran poder de sus pociones con las palabras residia en la creación de maravillosas mezclas, que ella mezclaba de forma pausada, tranquila, poco a poco, ...nunca antes el sudor había sido una joya, pero ella conseguía aunarlos, mecerlos y elevarlos a la categoría de poema:
Ninguna joya más hermosa que el sudor.

Es única en el mundo, un pequeño objeto precioso, eterna luchadora, con una visión tan particular del mundo, y está aún por descubrir por sus seres más cercanos.

Posiblemente una cabellera tan excepcional no deja ver una sonrisa tan dulce, posiblemente no entienden el moldeado de sus rizos, y porque se entrelazan generando figuras únicas y ambiguas, o quizás, sienten vergüenza de no saber expresar los golpes de la vida con notas musicales, y han de usar el verbo. Ninguna música más hermosa que el impacto.

Once upon a time there was a beauty. Her little dark curls kept a secret: each ringlet knew a word, and because of this, her abundant hair was quite a dictionary. That made her talkative, and others, far from recognising the power of the Word, were overwhelmed by her speeches. Many were scared of her, and criticised her for this reason, but if anyone ever stopped to listen, they were enthralled.

The great power of her word potions was in the creation of wonderful mixtures, that she stirred slowly, gently, little by little... never had sweat been a jewel before, but she could put them together, cradle them and lift them to the categpry of poem:
no jewels like beads of sweat.

She's unique, a little, beautiful object, eternal fighter, with such a special worldview, still undiscovered by those closest to her.

It is very likely that such exceptional hair doesn't let others notice the sweetest smile, they probably don't understand the shape of her curls, because they entwine creating ambiguous, unique patterns, or maybe, they are ashamed because they cannot express life's troubles with musical notation, and must use words.
No music like a body against a mat.