The arrow between the verses of the poets (I): the Machado Brothers

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The arrow between the poets' verses (and IV): the spirit of Fernando Villalón

Carmen Arjona exalts the saeta with a woman's name

A new Lent has begun in the streets of the city. The days, with the candle on the hip, will go by slowly, one after another, section by section –I mean… week by week–, until we come face to face with the days we have dreamed of all year. From Palm Sunday –and from the days of Vespers too– until the Virgin of Aurora Cross the pointed arch of Santa Marina to the sounds of the National Anthem, Seville, and all of Andalusia, will live in the streets its great celebration, because the Lord is going to be arrested and crucified between two thieves.

During all those days the saetas will sound in the voices of those who know how to pray singing, that the saeta is flamenco and this is cante by arrows. Either at the foot of the steps, or from the balconies decorated with damask and new palm, or from the eternal balconies of heaven.

And of that – of songs, of laments and of sorrows and joys of the soul – they, the poets, understand more and better than we do, because “their life – as he wrote Rafael Montesinos, boy became a man with the Virgin of the Valley on the lips – is between dream and reality”. That is why I wanted to leave my verses entangled in an orange tree on Olivares Street in my town and bring you the poems of the poets who have sung to the saeta and made a name for themselves. cante great for the greater glory of Almighty God.

«The saetas will sound in the voices of those who know how to pray singing, that the saeta is flamenco and this is cante by arrows. Either at the foot of the steps, or from the balconies decorated with damask and new palm, or from the eternal balconies of heaven.

We have to draw on his octosyllables, his alexandrine verses, as we must draw on these dates of Who will lend me a ladder to climb the wood?, that the least of the Ax He rescued from among his father's old books to pray to him, so civilly, so from the popular and the profane, to a Christ who, although he carries the cross along Dueñas Street, the poet remembers in his memory nailed to the wood and whom he wants to see resurrected, revived, walking on the sea. How much sun and how much morning sky of Palm Sunday there is in those last verses of Colliure! "These blue days and this sun of childhood". Childhood and a people, the Andalusian people, who “every spring, ask for stairs.”

Childhood that his brother Manuel, between Paris and Seville, between Montmartre and La Macarena, gives to the voice of the people, that “until the people sing them, the verses are not verses”, the verses that describe the moment, the instant in which the voice of man touches the cross of Christ through the air laden with incense:

THE ARROW

I

Look where it comes from
the best of those born…

A street in Seville
between prayers and sighs…
Long silver trumpets.
Silk tunics… Candles,
in an anthill of stars,
festooning the path…

Orange blossom and incense
intoxicate the senses.
Window facing the night
It lights up suddenly,
and in it a voice - arrow! -
sing or cry, which is the same:

Look where it comes from
the best of those born…

II

Plainchant… Feeling
that is sung without a guitar.
Wonderful
that by accompaniment
has…, Holy Week
of Sevilla

Song of our songs,
crying and praying. Singing,
psalm and trill.
Among the scents of orange blossoms
so human and, at the same time,
so divine!

Song of the Andalusian people:
…of how swallows
They removed the thorns
to the King of Heaven on the Cross.