Upon Reading Federico García Lorca in a Spanish Children’s Bookstore
We stepped from the rainy Madrid streets Into a magical spell Where miniature worlds Spilled across bookshelves. Some universes embroidered with scarlet trees, Others gilded with golden leaves. There were watercolour washes Of cadmium and cobalt Circling beneath a collage of cutout vellum. Cherubic faces Dipped in dark Art Nouveau ink Were kissing cheeks With otherworldly urchins. It was a bricolage De lugares mágicos-- Not of your high tea Wonderlands and Neverlands and Narnias… Together we read twelve Poetic fictions fashioned Through a surreal cerulean horse, Tethered by conch shells, Floating through the grainy ethereal portal, Nuzzling the blind boy who extends a solitary candle So that we might see What we do not see. From within the pages, We hear a mother singing Lorca’s lullabies To wide-eyed children Who cry, Mamá, bórdame en tu almohada. And so she sews Los ojos de sus hijos Into a sleep of haunting Spanish love lyrics and magical meters. And I wonder-- What is a child? I see in your eyes An answer Down the winding tunnel Dropping past your earthly age To a kernel Not yet popped Into material form with pigments and papers And Spanish conjugations-- A world in a seedling Still unfolding, bordered and borderless. Mary McCulley Mary McCulley is a native Texan who currently teaches composition and literature courses at a small private school in the cornfields of Ohio. She is particularly fond of children's illustrated books and impressionistic art. Website.
1 Comment
6/21/2024 01:27:37 pm
Your piece transports me to hours spent with my daughters immersed in the colors you describe in a public library. When the world outside was grey and unfriendly, my little ones were nourished by the artwork called illustration in the stories that I read to them. We laughed and cried for the characters and drew courage and hope from the words.
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