Sketch of a note to Antoni Miró

Miquel Martí i Pol

Toni Miró, I say, listen to this:
time’s impertinent verbosity
it’s an obscene and devastating trap
and you who know this go straight on and write,
lucidly, on the other side of the mirror.
Meticulously, you draw chiaroscuros
on the tired and vehement skin,
so light penetrates the uncertain
texture of the years and scatters clearness
much further than the fallacious horizon
of these ups and downs of a vibrating life
always headed towards annihilation.
From which secret well do you draw
the luminous and perennial meaning
of each gesture, of each movement?
Shrewd and solemn, do you leave
the commotion
to turn each stroke into fire
and become more tender and challenging?
or do you trace parables of wind
to incite the rain and worry
of defining the course correctly?
Symbols and space combine the desire,
the explosion of red and the feeling of blue
that only you know how to master, discreet,
to unveil the devious enigma
of any mysterious gaze,
and so, undo, without even moving your fingers
the whole string of adverse solitudes
that like a yoke binds and subjugates us.
I ask a lot and you always reply
and it is seductive talking to the emptiness
in myself to which you attract me, stubborn
like a solemn and independent child.
I ask a lot and the nudity of body and mind
act for me like a sounding board
that no mirror happens to reflect
besides the one you offer me.
I think of you in the distance, Toni Miró, and I write
unaccustomed to all, closing my eyes
often so as to not break the spell
and learning more about myself, as one who retraces his steps
to rethink the nuisance of the future
without fear of the cliché fright.
I think of you often, distant friend, and I enjoy
conversing with you in silence
to transform stillness into song
and win spaces of subtle music.
Everything happens by squeezing solitude,
shaping words trickily,
giving up tinsel and pomp
to achieve the essential explosion;
everything becomes bright inside
and the challenge, the shout, the turpitude and the pleasure
are only the aureole of the lightning
with which we can, maybe, fight the old
trap of time, verbose, impertinent
and, in the end, obscene and devastating.

(October, 1992)