Antes de volver a casa, nos ha dado tiempo para visitar una última visita a una joya granadina: la Basílica de san Juan de Dios. Mientras caminábamos hacia allí, iba leyendo en voz alta el emocionante poema de Mario Míguez sobre San Juan de Dios, que fue la introducción ideal a la visita.
Tenía billete para volver en tren, pero he aprovecho la oportunidad de alargar estos días de amistad y convivencia intensa uniéndome al road trip, primero de las de Pamplona y, luego, de las de Madrid. Los dos coches nos hemos encontrado a medio camino para comer juntas, así que me he cambiado del uno al otro. Broche de oro para unos días inolvidables.
SPAIN Major Jackson for Mark Strand Beneath canopies of green, unionists marched doggedly outside The Embassy. Their din was no match for light lancing through leaves of madrone trees lining the Paseo then flashing off glossy black Maybachs skidding round a plaza like a monarch fleeing the paparazzi. Your voice skipped and paused like a pencil. Layers of morning pastries flaked gingerly then fell, soft as vowels, on a china plate. One learns to cherish the wizened reserve of old world manners, two blotched hands making wings of a daily paper beside us between sips of café con leche, a demeanor in short gentle as grand edifices along this boulevard. Yet Guernica is down the street, and some windshields wear a sinister face, sometimes two. Think Goya. Just south of here, on the lower slopes of the Sierras, fields of olive groves braid the land like a Moorish head, but those sultans were kicked out long ago. In the lobby of the Hotel Urban, I wait for a cab, my obedient rolling bag like a pet beside me. I have loved again another city but Madrid is yours: her caped olé’s, her bullish flag, her glass pavilions and outdoor tables like a festival of collaged laughter, our dark harbors finding level.