SIMON PARKER
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Said and done
​For Felix

Once I read a poem
by one of your countrymen
Nicolás Guillién.
You knew it by heart and bellowed,
Si me lo hubieran dicho
We laughed, searched each other’s eyes
for the depths of friendship, ours.

This poem, a beating heart laid bare,
spoke of the conditional despair
of our corrugated existence,
how love loses its way
in the disordered unfolding of lives.
Two friends, soldered,
who shared poems

joy’s tears, Silvio Rodriguez,
Moros y Cristianos,
flew pedalling through Havana.
Our damp bodies hugged,
undying friendship held
to our breasts
needing no poet’s lament.


​Now, I can’t find that poem,
and I’m not sure whether it was written
by Nicolás, Jorge, Rafael
or any Guillién at all,
or what it really said about those two friends.
I would ring you, or send you an email,
but I no longer know where you live.
When all is said and done,
I know I can look through this window,
holding my book of Spanish verse,
certain only that the weather will change,
and as Rafael Guillién answers
                                                                   ¿Destino?
¡ Oh absoluto Presente!




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  • Home
  • Blog
  • Theatre
    • Aching Parts
    • Take me to where the arrows no longer fall
    • The Right Kind of Violence
    • Own Goal
    • Mooring
    • Yellow Fever
    • Just Like Flies
    • Snap
    • Home
    • Vex
  • Fictions
    • Gross
    • The 7.22
    • For Those Who Trespass
    • Karaoke
    • We Only Notice When It's Gone
    • This is a story that I am going to make a story out of
    • Les Anglais en Vacances
    • She
    • La Comedie Humaine
  • POETRY
    • Unfolding
    • Street Scene
    • Said and done
    • Ingres and Delacroix share a coffee
    • If you follow the silk road
    • In him we trust
    • n.b. for Barney
    • Who Can Erase The Traces?
  • LIVEWORKS
    • Notes from a wanderer
  • News
  • New Page
  • Contact