Bill Richardson is emeritus professor in Spanish at the University of Galway, Ireland, and has published extensively on Spanish and Latin American literature and culture. His love of Spain and its Mediterranean regions dates back decades, and he is a frequent visitor to Andalusia and especially the Alpujarra mountain region in the province of Granada. His poems have been published in numerous journals and poetry magazines. Poems of his have been finalists in the Fish Poetry Prize competition, the Write By The Sea competition and the A Post Irish Book Awards Poetry Section.
Twin spouts of the Fuente del Calvario
dispense the ice-cold crystal water
from the peaks of Sierra Nevada,
reigning above ten thousand feet.
The melting snows that live there
all year long and tumble down
Poqueira Gorge criss-cross the fertile
ground to this street corner in little
Capileira, where the fountain, as
I pass, gives out a liquid song,
pouring its roiling notes over
the morning, the noon and night.
And when I drink, the taste recalls
the thirsty Moors who walked this place
a thousand years ago, the ones
who first dug out the water courses
from these slopes, causing the land
to spring up shrubs and frondy plants
that exude their sweet aromas:
mint and marjoram, fennel, fig and vine,
and like an endless stream
that wanders as it’s weaving,
the fountain braids its current
into the buds and branches of our life.
Alpujarra Halloween
Capileira, All Souls’ Day
Sylph sky above Sierra de Lújar –
cloud on a rocky mountain,
no enigmas promised or concealed.
All day we wait for the feast,
the baker in his little shop and I,
sensing transformations,
feeling revelations drawing near.
We know the more we give
the gap we bridge is greater,
while Poqueira waters
careen along the valley
and children in the plaza
embrace the ways of skulls and ghouls and skeletons.
No point lamenting lost traditions –
snakes and rats and lizards still survive.
Give us a way to celebrate what’s new
and bake the bread that fills the day with hunger
for saints and souls, processions and the cross.
Poetry in this post: © Bill Richardson
Published with the permission of Bill Richardson