When I heard poet Russ Sargent read this week’s poem aloud last fall, I felt the exquisite chills of what Spanish-speakers call duende – a heightened sense of feeling or passion, mortality and life, that’s often associated with flamenco.
Sargent’s “Granada” brings us down the less-travelled streets of a beautiful Spanish city, then gently guides us in how to meet the losses we will encounter there. Its breathtaking final image reminds us of how even the humblest art can raise and release us.
Russ Sargent, poet and owner of Yes Books in Portland, has travelled often to Spain. This poem was written while he was a member of Group 18, a poetry group formed around Linda Gregg and Jack Gilbert in Northampton, Massachusetts.
Granada
By Russ Sargent
When you walk down
from the Alhambra, take
small steps past the cuevas
and gypsies selling roses. Feel
lucky when you find the grave
circled with stones and women
dressed in black who beat
olive trees with sticks slowly
filling their nets. You will
cross where a river was.
Behind a burro carrying dirt.
Feel the pain in your feet as
you descend through the century
plants and find yourself
under the bridge where a man
roasts potatoes in a pile
of burning rags. Do not notice
how both the river and his legs
are gone. Just listen to the song.
Listen to the man almost to
his waist in dry ground, singing.
Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer who lives in Portland. Deep Water: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “Granada” copyright © 2019 by Russ Sargent, reprinted from “The Café Review,” published in fall 2019. It appears by permission of the author.
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