Quotes floating on the editor’s desk. No. 2

As per MARK TWAIN
We have natural and justifiable distrust of talky men who make a sounding and ostentatious pretense of saying a thing and yet don’t say it after all — men who hide a mustard-seed of an idea in a kaleidoscope of words, so that the more you turn the thing the more you can’t quite capture that elusive little idea, because it always takes refuge, just in time, behind a new and bewitching rainbow-explosion of fine language …
– in a letter to unidentified friend, 1876

Rendez-vous in San Nicolas

I will not meet you there directly, no
we will meet at Mirador San Nicolas
on the outskirts of Granada and there
we will dine and catch up on so many things
as it has been several incarnations, since last
we were face to face – and it is from there that
we journey together, thou and I, to hear nightingales
beneath a cloudfree sky of robin’s egg blue
and we will listen to a little concert of the Goyescas
of Granados and you will laugh because the encore
will be called a la cubana and I will laugh too
and later when we have reached it
we will hear de Falla’s Noches en los Jardines de España
En el Generalife the jasmine-scented gardens
around the palace of the king’s harem at Calat el-hamra
La Alhambra – the red – because of the sunsets
on the ancient ancient walls
how long have I longed to go there with you –
a thousand years of conquest and reconquest
and Berber kings of Al-Andalus and the Nasrid dynasty
moorish palaces with their long reflecting pools
that at night are filled with dancing stars
and we will get drunk on the scent of roses, and you
will spin me tales as we wander through the orange groves
and not only horror stories of pillage in Latin America and
we will forgive the tyrants and the jesuits – the imperialists
the Incas, the Mayans, the Catholics – everyone
we will forgive them all and listen only to the fountains

Timea Deinhardt
https://timeadeinhardt.wordpress.com

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