At the Hostel de los Ramos, on the balcony

looking down at us, a group of couples

jumped & jived to dance club mix. To techno.

 

A woman in a silver skirt waved seductively at me,

to everyone strolling down the street, & her lover

– black-crow hair, a jaw like a hammer –

 

bullied her with Spaniard machismo & after-dinner kisses

& just far enough away from the balcony

so that we couldn’t see what other excitements happened

between them. The air sparkled.

 

Barcelona’s crazy; it’s an enlargement of desire; it never stops,

my wife exclaimed to me as we hiked up the avenue

in & then and out of the Ravel district

where two lovers held tight to one another

& kissed beneath a sagging Sycamore tree.

The woman let him sip her beer.

 

I think we love an emptiness in us until it enlarges –

& then we make a world in that, I said.

 

My wife scooped me closer to herself & patrons

– across the street from us – watched soccer

at an outside bar where beer & tapas were served.

 

The air, salty now. Parakeets singing in palm trees,

just out of the ear’s range. The taste of the evening

somehow numbing our tongues with garlic,

with hot peppers…

 

& a raven-haired woman

hand-to-hand dancing with an old man

who had been playing a fiddle underneath

 

the cathedral’s gothic glow… the light of it youthful,

beautiful, fermenting…

 

 

​

“& the pirate life of the heart is always

an immigrant within a desire,”

the angel of the Ravel district offered,

hearing us speaking to one another.

 

“It’s a thief’s journal with an ache,” he whispered –

“& it’s a desire that forever tries to save its own life

in the impassioned arms of another;

 

& – you know –

it awakens in love’s election,”

the angel said to us there…

 

“& to be constantly present to one another

is the demand of living a true revolt

 

for the consent to breach the distance –

& I mean the distance

where beauty and reality are identical,

& that’s a love, without any fear,”

 

the angel said to us as we ran together

across the Las Ramblas into the old city.

 

& this is the part the angel told me to remember:

 

mendicants & revelers singing

Spanish military anthems & other travelers –

just sweet-hearted people dancing together

until even their histories

didn’t matter anymore; –

 

& the night heat changeless, like mezcal,

& the soft albino light of the street lamps

just like white fermented beans

glowing moodily

under the night’s

cabbage colors,

its rainbow sparkles…

 

You see, this is what we both remember,

& what I’m writing to you now:

 

Love & Beauty are a testimony of spirit that grace granted

into the incarnated vision of this world,

 

& to give it away so that it nourishes others

is all the night parade asks us to do . . .

&, but for each other,

we could knock the lamp shade from the moon

just to give it all up / just to hold the beloved

 

&

to touch the beautiful in us that can never change.