Joan Guerola Tolsà
Born in Otos, a beautiful town in the Vall d’Albaida (Valencia)
Otos
You make yourself present in the fox that the muscat is looking for,
also on the roads and in the country house of Suagres,
surely a tireless sentinel he
that protects us from bad air.
You make yourself present in swallows and whitewashed facades
with balconies and wrought iron bars.
I like the lift in the street
and the water tents to the potter,
car horns mingle
with shouts of the packet, cheese or fishmongers.
They hang limes to the capterrera in the sun
among jasmine flowers that grow at night
and they die during the day, like slate between fingers.
It blows west that burns and scratches furrows, stumps and margins,
the damn speaker who scratches walls and roofs
and when he gets tired, at sunset, he falls asleep with endless redness.
Until the Querns sang, donkey afternoons by the fire.
Afternoons talking about exile and hunger, and that we had little.
They often relieved themselves with the tears of crying.
Bells that revolt, bells that ring to the dead;
Formerly women to mass at second touch
arm in arm, they were no longer trotting.
I do not forget the silences of the people,
even less of the people who move it.
Otos emotions that I want to share,
These are not romances about the words that I say,
burst feelings tempers and moves,
emotion that is lost, emotion that goes without fuss,
but thus, the source of the heart never runs dry,
since the dead have marked life as I am.
