Today has been a difficult day he thought, as there on his desk, finally, lay some evidence of his struggle with the music he was writing. Since early this morning he’d been backtracking, remembering the steps that had enabled him to write the entirely successful first movement. He was going over the traces, examining the clues that were there (somewhere) in his sketches and diary jottings. They always seem so disorganised these marks and words and graphics, but eventually a little clarity was revealed and he could hear and see the music for what it was. But what was it to become? He had a firm idea, but he didn’t know how to go about getting it onto the page. The second slow movement seemed as elusive today as ever it had been.

There was something intrinsically difficult about slow music, particularly slow music for strings. The instruments’ ability to sustain and make pitches and chords flow seamlessly into one another magnified every inconsistency of his part-writing technique and harmonic justification. Faster music, music that constantly moved and changed, was just so much easier. The errors disappeared before the ear could catch them.

Writing music that was slow in tempo, whose harmonic rhythm was measured and took its time, required a level of sustained thought that only silence and intense concentration made properly possible. His studio was far from silent (outside the traffic spat and roared) and today his concentration seemed at a particularly low ebb. He was modelling this music on a Vivaldi Concerto, No.6 from L’Estro Armonico. That collective title meant Harmonic Inspiration, and inspiring this collection of 12 concerti for strings certainly was. Bach reworked six of these concertos in a variety of ways.

He could imagine the affect of this music from that magical city of the sea, Venice, La Serenissima, appearing as a warm but fresh wind of harmony and invention across those early, usually handwritten scores. Bach’s predecessors, Schutz and Schein had travelled to Venice and studied under the Gabrielis and later the maestro himself, Claudio Monteverdi. But for Bach the limitations of his situation, without such patronage enjoyed by earlier generations, made such journeying impossible. At twenty he did travel on foot from Arnstadt to Lubeck, some 250 miles, to experience the ***** improvisations of Dietriche Buxtehude, and stayed some three months to copy Buxtehude’s scores, managing to avoid the temptation of his daughter who, it was said, ‘went with the post’ on the Kapelmeister’s retirement. Handel’s visit to Buxtehude lasted twenty-four hours. To go to Italy? No. For Bach it was not to be.

But for this present day composer he had been to Italy, and his piece was to be his memory of Venice in the dark, sea-damp days of November when the acqua alta pursued its inhabitants (and all those tourists) about the city calles. No matter if the weather had been bad, it had been an arresting experience, and he enjoyed recovering the differing qualities of it in unguarded moments, usually when walking, because in Venice one walked, because that was how the city revealed itself despite the advice of John Ruskin and later Jan Morris who reckoned you had to have your own boat to properly experience this almost floating city.

As he chipped away at this unforgiving rock of a second movement he suddenly recalled that today was the first day of Epiphany, and in Venice the peculiar festival of La Befana. A strange tale this, where according to the legend, the night before the Wise Men arrived at the manger they stopped at the shack of an old woman to ask directions. They invited her to come along but she replied that she was too busy. Then a shepherd asked her to join him but again she refused. Later that night, she saw a great light in the sky and decided to join the Wise Men and the shepherd bearing gifts that had belonged to her child who had died. She got lost and never found the manger. Now La Befana flies around on her broomstick each year on the 11th night, bringing gifts to children in hopes that she might find the Baby Jesus. Children hang their stockings on the evening of January 5 awaiting the visit of La Befana. Hmm, he thought, and today the gondoliers take part in a race dressed as old women, and with a broomstick stuck vertically as a mast from each boat. Ah, L’Epiphania.

Here in this English Cathedral city where our composer lived Epiphany was celebrated only by the presence of a crib of contemporary sculptured forms that for many years had never ceased to beguile him, had made him stop and wonder. And this morning on his way out from Morning Office he had stopped and knelt by the figures he had so often meditated upon, and noticed three gifts, a golden box, a glass dish of incense and a tiny carved cabinet of myrrh,  laid in front of the Christ Child.

Yes, he would think of his second movement as ‘L’Epiphania’. It would be full of quiet  and slow wonder, but like the tale of La Befana a searching piece with no conclusion except a seque into the final fast and spirited conclusion to the piece. His second movement would be a night piece, an interlude that spoke of the mystery of the Incarnation, of God becoming Man. That seemed rather ambitious, but he felt it was a worthy ambition nevertheless.

Llueve en el mar:
al mar lo que es del mar
y que se seque la heredad.

¿La ola no tiene forma?
En un instante se esculpe
y en otro se desmorona
en la que emerge, redonda.
Su movimiento es su forma.

Las olas se retiran
-ancas, espaldas, nucas-
pero vuelven las olas
-pechos, bocas, espumas-.

Muere de sed el mar.
Se retuerce, sin nadie,
en su lecho de rocas.
Muere de sed de aire.

Siento tu respiración acelerarse,
Pero me cuesta trabajo
Empatar mi desbocado corazón
Con tu necesitada agonía.
Día a día crece el sentimiento,
Y me da miendo sentir
Esta vulnerabilidad.
Te abrazo y estorban los cuerpos,
Y esque nunca creí ver en tus ojos
Los ojos con los que yo tanto soñe.
Me da miedo que un día te levantes,
Y te des cuenta que no soy quien esperabas, ni el princepe azul
Que tanto anhelabas.
Espero tu corazón alcance mis latidos,
Y que tu boca no se seque
De tanto besar.
¿A caso estoy loco?
Pues mi insana mente se enferma
De claridad, y una luz se cuele
Entre la sombra para enclarecer
Lo que nunca tuve claro,
O tal vez simplemente me negue a ver.
Siempre estuvo frente a mí,
Y ahora que la tengo pierdo cordura,
Mientras ella se mantiente
en sana sobriedad, espero
Solo sean ideas mías, y mi luz
No se pierda con sombra
Pues es para mi solo ella,
Y hoy admito que estoy loco,
Loco por ella

Enganchada en tu encanto
Encantada de estar enganchada,
a esa elegante manera en cual me lavas el hastió.

Enganchada a cada intento.
Yo que en la vida no he pretendido nada,
ahora vivo para encolarme en tu verso.  
Yo que me he convertido en tu mefítico verso,
que delinea toda la pureza de una entrega imperecedera,
llena de puro deseo,
deseando ser poseída por tu magia,
que me pintes con tu lienzo,
que me linces el pensamiento,
de volver a la limpia tizne en el cual antes de ti vivía.

Yo que me cuelgo como sábana a tu cuerpo,
ahí, cubriéndote en pasión,
protegiéndote del frio de una noche sin amor,
resistiendo el cuerpo, el aire, y el mismo infierno,
para encubrirte, para calentarte en mi fogón.  

Si, lávame como sucio lienzo.
Estrújame mis tendidas ganas,
engánchalas al aire fresco,
que las seque el picaresco sol de tus labios.

Si, lávame toda la inmundicia que dejaron amores ingratos.
Lávame la mugre de la soledad.
Que tu prosa sea el desinfectante para desmanchar el lodo del silencio.  
Que tu aliento se convierta en suavizante, para mi piel reseca y escamosa.
Que tus labios sean los ganchos, que sujeten el caño de agua cuando vayas a exprimirme,
después de tenderme exánime en tu pasión desbordada..

¡Si!
Lávame,
Tiéndeme,
Tiéntame,
Engánchame,
Estrújame,
Detenme,
Atájame,
Paralízame….,

¡Es que a tu amor…..quiero vivir enganchada!
¡Es que siempre serás, mi mejor gancho!


LeydisProse
7/18/2017
https://www.facebook.com/LeydisProse/

A esa hora, en esa oscuridad,
en ese silencio cuando el malecón priva de turistas
ahí quiero hacer el amor.

A esa hora,
en esas piedras que han sido testigo de tanta guerra,
quiero que tú y yo en ella, descubramos la paz.

A esa hora,
que nos cante el mar su canción favorita,
que sus olas compitan con nuestro ritmo.
y vea ella como dos almas se entregan entre gemidos.
Que nuestros cuerpos sirvan para que se
enamore el agua de la muralla que trilla.

A esa hora,
en medio del rompeolas, quiero romper este deseo,
entregarme a ti sin peros, pasar toda la noche en tus brazos,
besarte hasta que se seque mi boca,
amarte y calentar el frio de esas murallas.

Que se encele el cielo *****,
que se caliente el océano,
que encuentre la bruma su claridad
en la manera en que tú y yo, nos sabemos entregar.

A esa hora
en el silencio de la noche
cuando el malecón priva de turistas,
quiero hacer el amor, hasta que sea de día.

LeydisProse
2/2/2018
https://m.facebook.com/LeydisProse/

ENCADENADOS



Miradas encadenas,

cadenas que no pesan nada,

pues se han atado, a la persona amada.



Ojos que miran con justicia,

justicia en justa medida.  

Miradas que se miran con igualdad divina,

con desquicia, pero sin avaricia

de poseer el otro, solo, amarse

hasta que el pozo del tiempo

se seque por dentro,

consecuentemente poniendo

distancia de por medio.



Cadenas con fibras de libertad

- pues sus ojos en otros se pudieron fijar,

mas el convenio de por siempre amarse,

de encontrarse reflejado en el otro;

sin atropellos, sin descuido,

sin desacierto, sin desvarió

convierte esas ataduras

en liviana expresión

que les llena de emoción

su cotidiana convivencia,

al encontrarse en cada mañana

todavía atados a ese voto de amor

que hace tiempo se prometieron.



Miradas encadenadas,

cautivos de la esperanza,

de esa esperanza de siempre

atravesar el mundo juntos

sin inconveniencia, sin apuros,

sin  apatía a la noche fría,

sin oposición a los cambiantes rayos del sol,

sin disconformidad..,

cada uno amando a raudales

perdiéndose en esos espacios

donde sus miradas reafirman su acuerdo.



Se miran todos los días por primera vez,

Se miran como si fuesen su mejor horizonte,

Se miran y sus cadenas parecen invisibles,

esas cadenas de amor que entre ellos existe.



Encadenados por convicción

cada eslabón fortaleciendo su conexión.

Y sus ojos reafirman que son su mejor

compromiso de lealtad y amor.



LeydisProse

10/8/2018

https://m.facebook.com/LeydisProse//

talmente llovió sangre/
sangre llovió por mi país
de las venas que el verdugo cortó/
del corazón que las recuerda/
hermanos en la sangre a navegar
cada día cada día cada día/
este viajar no nos conduce
al paraíso ni al infierno/
no vamos al paraíso/
no vamos al infierno/
¿a dónde vamos/sangre/
que cantás amada en la noche?
¿o como pájaro volás
de sangre a sangre/recordando/
o sea gorrión de resistir
al olvido/que ni una gota seque?
así navegamos/ciegos/
para que nadie se secase/
o volara de sangre a sangre
y pudiera cantar/cantar