Ghost Horses

There's a fair in town! Three main streets and half the market square filled overnight as if by magic with the garish colours, sounds and aromas of fair-land. The mizzle could not keep us away; in droves we descended on this Sunday morning to grab a little fun and fantasy.

There were the latest rides and thrills - yet still, some old favourites; shooting galleries, hook-the-duck and especially for me, the beloved and beautifully painted merry-go-round. Nostalgia!

This poem (in translation from Spanish) fits the bill for me, describing a yearning for something we have lost, triggered by the fairground horses.

Like the almost forgotten
galloping of fairground horses,
today, in our homes, the enchantment
of a brave new world seduces us:
the blurred whirling of the image.
But night knocks at the door,
and silence summons
the words we have lost -
like a handful of grey pebbles
at the bottom of the river,
in freezing fog.
Like a slow tide they ebb back,
far-off cradle-songs, echoes
of elegies, murmurings...

Pierced by nostalgia, the poet falls silent.
And glimpses, behind closed eyes,
the blind enigma
of a time of dream and frenzy,
that spins more swiftly
than the fairground horses.
Seduced by technology's enchantment,
man's sad pride
threatens us.
But words do not die.
A candle in the night, poetry
is shared wisdom
against forgetting. And pure grace
of a full grown art: precision and play.

JORDI PÀMIAS
Translation: Anna Crowe