Uncertain teeth, corkscrew hair, ready laugh.
Staccato speech: you tell me my Spanish is half
as good again as your own.
Yet you speak of economics,
and heartily wished for tonics
for the building trade.
Uncertain words, spastic verbs, hearty laugh.
Ambiguous jokes: I tell you I wish I could have
spoken better to
another fond recipient
of my garbled and insistent
Castilian tirades.
Comments
whiskey | July 13, 2009 - 12:13
I keep reading this, Ewan, yet I'm still unsure what it's about, even after looking up 'Gitano', but here goes!...
It seems the narrator's having a conversation with a Spanish Romany. The second stanza had me thinking the Romany was doing building work for the narrator, a holiday home, perhaps, and that things weren't going to plan. The last stanza suggests that someone else is ultimately responsible for the problems (the Romany's boss, a Spanish architect or whatever) and the narrator is utterly frustrated at his/her inability to communicate efficiently. (I thought the narrator was British, but 'Castilian tirade' suggests otherwise, so help me out here, please, and tell me what it's really about!)
Ewan | July 13, 2009 - 19:50
No.. the narrator is having a conversation with a Spanish Romany... conversation is about how tough things are in the building trade... the narrator is frustrated about poor communication skills, although the Romany is impressed by them. Perhaps because it is is a social occasion. Castilian is like Fusha Arabic or RP as was, the perceived standard for spoken Spanish. Something the narrator can only dream of. The narrator would rather be practising his spanish with someone else: tirades is a look at how rehearsed spiels in in foreign languages can sound a little hectoring.
I've had to explain this, so it didn't work, n'est-ce pas?
whiskey | July 13, 2009 - 23:10
Poets always explain a poem before reading or performing it (but rarely in their books, which I often think is a shame). (Poems are personal to the poet, so they know of the difficulties readers encounter.) For example, I heard Carol Ann Duffy explain and read a particular poem of hers at Chepstow the other month (her first reading after becoming laureate). It was one I'd never understood because I'm not versed in the classics. But I'd still enjoyed the language and the images. So finally understanding it was great, the icing on the cake if you like, but it wasn't hugely important. If you see what I mean!
Your poem intrigued me, made me want to read it again and again, so on that level, an important one, it definitely worked. :-)
threeleafshamrock | July 14, 2009 - 13:07
I experienced difficulties in Belgium. My French was passable (even if I did sound like I was being shaken warmly by the throat while gargling a pint of second-hand Domestos) but then I ran into Flemish. At least the Flemish engineers had a laugh making a complete tit of me.
Chris ;)
PS. Enjoyed this and could definitely identify ;)