The poet on a parked bike

Photo by Isabel Gomez de Diego (de Culla by immovable bike)

 

Where're You Going, Poet?

—Where're you going, Poet?

—With this bike that's going nowhere, I'm going to take a walk
through the streets of Ampuriabrava, Girona, where I'm spending a
few days and, if its tires aren't punctured, I'll travel the world any
other day. A World that normally has a lot to see and a lot to suffer;
but little to gain. A World in the power of some greats, men and
women, guarded by thugs, who consider us other lazy, homeless people.

From a group of people, walking past me, I hear something like a
saying or a chuck; this:

That a rich man asked a pedigree, at the door of a church:
—Why do you're asking? You don't have a trade?
—I'm a summer waiter, sir.
Exclaiming the rich man, turning his back on him and without
giving him a coin, just as nuns and priests do:

—Normal that there’s so much unemployment.

Near the beach of this Avenue, on the shore of the Gulf of Roses,
next to the Mediterranean Sea, I see some poor people of solemnity,
ragged, drugs, forgetful and drunk, who have nowhere to go, but they
do have a dog that barks at them. Listen to its bark.

Also, I see, now, in front of that bank or savings bank office, a
group of people protesting against a possible eviction that is going to be
carried out.

I ask one of the relatives:

—Why are you being evicted?

He answers me:

—Sir, my family has stopped paying the mortgage receipt for a couple of
months. A bad month, anyone spends it, with money, of course; but it's
that my family will pass it all from now on, because it has nowhere to
live or fall dead. The grandparents who held them are stiff (dead).

—I hope it gets better, but not by sticks, I replied.

Following the path, caught my attention two ladies, I don't know
if midwives or greengrocers and, since they blocked my path, I stopped
to listen to them without getting off the bike.

The twos were talking about a group of three priests who had
just emerged from a church across the street.
One said:

—The grace is in each one of his crown, if not in the end of its cocoons,
Chisdasvinta.

Then another:

—Sometimes his virtue is so much, that they bend to his bad
inclinations.

She paused, looking at me, and continued:

—Look at their faces, Sisebuta. Their faces say it all, any physicist would
say it: they’re badly inclined, vicious, thieves, falsifiers.

—But you Chisdasvinta, have you studied something?

I've studied Philosophy, Chisdasvinta. And sometimes I write Poetry
and Short Story.

I went on my way and, on another street, I saw, next to some
garbage bins, a bedspread, plates and vessels, a sideboard or table,
some pots that were empty, and other things.

I asked a passerby who stood in front of the furniture and
utensils, as if he's watching to see if he was interested in taking
something, since he had recently parked his car very close to the
containers:

—Hey sir, and all that seems new, why is it there?

He responded to me:

—An embargo and his collector have come to that building next door,
where that family is crying on their doorstep, and they have left things
that have not interested them.

I, who have an easy tear and cannot see these things, got out of there jumping with the bike.

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