Today's Flickr photo with the most hits: the Sanctuary of Sant Salvador, Majorca, Spain.
Today's Flickr photo with the most hits: Plaza del Potro - Cordoba.
The Fall of Seville
Abu al-Baqa’ al-Rundi - translation, James T. Monroe
Everything declines after reaching perfection, therefore let no man be beguiled by the sweetness of a pleasant life.
As you have observed, these are the decrees that are inconstant: he whom a single moment has made happy, has been harmed by many other moments;
And this is the abode that will show pity for no man, nor will any condition remain in is state for it.
Fate irrevocably destroys every ample coat of mail when Mashrifi swords and spears glance off without effect;
It unsheathes each sword only to destroy it even if it be an Ibn Dhi Yazan and the scabbard Ghumdan.
Where are the crowned kings of Yemen and where are their jewel-studded diadems and crowns?
Where are [the buildings] Shaddad raised in Iram and where [the empire] the Sassanians ruled in Persia?
Where is the gold Qarun once possessed; where are ‘Ad and Shaddad and Qahtan?
An irrevocable decree overcame them all so that they passed away and the people came to be as though they had never existed.
The kingdoms and kings that had been come to be like what a sleeper has told about [his] dream vision.
Fate turned against Darius as well as his slayer, and as for Chosroes, no vaulted palace offered him protection.
It is as if no cause had ever made the hard easy to bear, and as if Solomon had never ruled the world.
The misfortunes brought on by Fate are of many different kinds, while Time has causes of joy and of sorrow.
For the accidents [of fortune] there is a consolation that makes them easy to bear, yet there is no consolation for what has befallen Islam.
An event which cannot be endured has overtaken the peninsula; one such that Uhud has collapsed because of it and Thahlan has crumbled!
The evil eye struck [the peninsula] in its Islam so that [the land] decreased until whole regions and districts were despoiled of [the faith].
Therefore ask Valencia what is the state of Murcia; and where is Jativa, and where is Jaen?
Where is Cordoba, the home of the sciences, and many a scholar whose rank was once lofty in it?
Where is Seville and the pleasures it contains, as well as its sweet river overflowing and brimming full?
[They are] capitals which were the pillars of the land, yet when the pillars are gone, it may no longer endure!
The tap of the white ablution fount weeps in despair, like a passionate lover weeping at the departure of the beloved,
Over dwellings emptied of Islam that were first vacated and are now inhabited by unbelief;
In which the mosques have become churches wherein only bells and crosses may be found.
Even the mihrabs weep though they are solid; even the pulpits mourn through they are wooden!
O you who remain heedless though you have a warning in Fate: if you are asleep, Fate is always awake!
And you who walk forth cheerfully while your homeland diverts you [from cares], can a homeland beguile any man after [the loss of] Seville?
This misfortune has caused those that preceded it to be forgotten, nor can it ever be forgotten for the length of all time!
O you who ride lean, thoroughbred steeds which seem like eagles in the racecourse;
And you who carry slender, Indian blades which seem like fires in the darkness caused by the dust cloud [of war],
And you who are living in luxury beyond the sea enjoying life, you who have the strength and power in your homelands,
Have no you no news of the people of Andalus, for riders have carried forth what men have said [about them]?
How often have the weak, who were being killed and captured while no man stirred, asked our help?
What means this severing of the bonds of Islam on your behalf, when you, O worshipers of God, are [our] brethren?
Are there no heroic souls with lofty ambitions; are there no helpers and defenders of righteousness?
O, who will redress the humiliation of a people who were once powerful, a people whose condition injustice and tyrants have changed?
Yesterday they were kings in their own homes, but today they are slaves in the land of the infidel!
Thus, were you to see them perplexed, with no one to guide them, wearing the cloth of shame in its different shades,
And were you to behold their weeping when they are sold, the matter would strike fear into your heart, and sorrow would seize you.
Alas, many a mother and child have been parted as souls and bodies are separated!
And many a maiden fair as the sun when it rises, as though she were rubies and pearls,
Is led off to abomination by a barbarian against her will, while her eye is in tears and her heart is stunned.
The heart melts with sorrow at such [sights], if there is any Islam or belief in that heart!
The Andalusian city of Seville fell to Christian Castile in 1248, after over 500 years of being a Muslim city. Abu al-Baqa’ al-Rundi was a contemporary Andalusian poet from the city of Ronda, in southern Iberia, who wrote a lament about the fall of the once great city in 1267. He alluded to ancient Arabian and Persian history in his poem, hoping to inspire Muslims to rise up and recapture the city.
Today's Flickr photo with the most hits was taken in the Real Alcazar, in Seville; view towards la Giralda.
Today's Flickr photo with the most hits: Pamplona - Plaza de San Francisco
Without Reparations
Lupita Eyde-Tucker
“In 2015, the Spanish Parliament [. . .] enacted a law inviting the Sephardim—Jews who trace their roots to Spain—to return.” —from “Spain’s Attempt to Atone for a 500-Year-Old Sin” The Atlantic, Sept. 21, 2019
Land slit like a throat, life poured out like gold coins on cobblestone. Confessions pulled from tongues like toenails off toes. Piled with scorched scrolls: our paschal pyre,
confessions extracted like gold, coins swallowed then picked from the coals. Nothing sacred but pyres piled, a pathetic penance, my hands washed with my blood, an act of faith?
Is nothing sacred but my ashes, picture of oblivion, my name oblivion? My faith forgets its name, washed with blood, my act of courage or escape. Am I nothing? What is nothing?
Oblivion forgets my name, my faith the thing they cannot take, the gold I protect with my life. What is courage or escape? It is nothing I can lose or forsake, they took everything that tied me to this place.
They cannot take my faith, I protect it like gold pulled from tongues like toenails off toes, there’s nothing left to tie me to this place. Land slit like a throat, gold poured out.
Today's photo with the most hits: a night shot of the Puerta del Puente, Cordoba, Spain.
Today’s Flickr photo with the most hits: the Plaza del Castillo, Pamplona, Spian.
Today’s Flickr photo with the most hits: the hermitage church of Santa Gadea del Cid
Today's Flickr photo with the most hits; the Torre del Maldonado, in the Alcazar, Malaga.
Today’s Flickr photo with the most hits - the interior court of the castle of Jaen, Spain.
Today’s Flickr photo with the most hits: these caryatids from the Cervantes Institute, Madrid.
Guitarrero
Cyrus Cassells
Cyrus, always I try to put my soul
into building a guitar,
here on Cuesta de Gomerez,
full of sovereign guitar-makers,
street slanting up to an arch
of the colossal Alhambra.
What I worship is the feeling of the wood
in my hardworking hands,
wood selected and dried
for a three-decade minimum,
so I’m refining Mediterranean
or Canadian cypress,
Macassar ebony, and Lebanese cedar
that my paternal grandfather chose,
Abuelo Leonel who perished
the Satan-hot August
right before I was born
into a dynasty of on-fire
flamenco musicians and dancers.
Imagine, a top notch guitar
means perhaps a hundred hours
of dedicated labor, and, so help me,
I don’t work by the clock—
Sometimes it costs me
most of a day to adjust
the nitty-gritty strings and frets,
to insure the vigorous, brave sound
we’re famous for in Granada:
due to the vega’s dry air,
instruments from the Andalusian school
are (no doubt about it!) lighter,
distinctive—like a palace starling
or a peerless voice
that gently breathes and sings
in a stone basilica on Sunday morning—
acoustic splendor and tone to rival
the able makers in Madrid—
At the fabled Moorish citadel’s hem,
I bring my busy-as-hell hands
to the timeless task of planing
and judge the thickness
of my newly launched guitars
with my tried-and-true fingers.
The tradition, I tell you, is to present
your very first guitar as a gift
to the regal, lullaby-whispering woman
who latched you to this bustling,
wondrous world:
Oh what an exhilarating day
when my never-fail mother, Primavera,
carefully inspected my first ever piece,
proclaiming (almost singing it!):
Guitarrero!
Today’s Flickr photo with the most hits: this statue of Seneca, in Cordoba. This was the town of his birth.
Seneca was a Roman author, orator and philosopher, politician, and tutor to Nero. It was Nero, as emperor, who forced his suicide in 65 CE.
Dead Poets
ummily - she says it’s a work in progress. But she turned it out in the world anyway.
On my pillow in broken English And black ink. A Fitzgerald quote dances in the breeze of the half-cracked window. The clothes outside dangle Hot and crisp from the City’s sun.
This city has its own sun That beats down hard Against the pavement. Hearts beating hard against the pavement Of our souls and ribs.
If Fitzgerald was right Then “they slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered.” Slipped and
fell.
Scars stain our hearts And knees burn Like the sun beats down On the pavement Of our memories.
But then again, Perhaps it was Keats that had it right -
BOLD lover- “Heard melodies are sweet But those unheard are sweeter.” Like you in my sweater.
Ode in a Spanish email Plays on repeat, Trapped in my head. It’s that song that keeps be writing About you In this little book Trapped in this little book Like the etchings Keats admired Trapped in the moment before Their first kiss. Forever trapped, Lingering in their longing.
I’ll lick the wounds From quickly turned pages The sour blood of this longing Tormented by time “Heard melodies are sweet But those unheard are sweeter” Like a nagging child Taunting - Thumbs in ears, Tongue out.
I wish my skin was sewn together With the threads of that sweater So you could wear me Again and again.
The Barcelona Inside Me
Robin Becker’s fabulously evocative piece on the Catalan city
Give me, again, the fairy tale grotto with the portico-vaulting overhead. Let me walk beneath the canted columns of Gaudí’s rookery, spiral along his crenelated Jerusalem of broken tiles, crazy shields. Yes, it’s hot as hell and full of tourists at the double helix, but the anarchists now occupy the Food Court, and the arcadian dream for the working class includes this shady colonnade cut into the mountainside. I’ve postponed my allegiance to the tiny house movement, to the 450 square feet of simple, American maple infrastructure and the roomy mind suspended like a hammock between joists. Serpents and castle keeps shimmer, and a mosaic invitation to the Confectionery gets me a free café con leche on the La Rambla,
where honeycombed apartments bend on chiseled stone and host floating, wrought-iron balconies. I think I’ll move into Gaudí’s dream of recycled mesh, walk barefoot on his flagstone tiles inscribed with seaweed and sacred graffiti from pagan tombs. O, Barcelona of chamfered corners! And chimneys of cowled warriors! From Gaudí’s Book of Revelations, I invite the goblet and the stone Mobius strip to a tapas of grilled prawns and squid. Gaudí’s book of Revelations.