Almost two years ago when me moved from our large Kerrisdale house to our  present duplex in Kitsilano I gave up unloading some of my books.

Fortunately Dan Stewart at Macleod Books accepted around 500 as a gift. I still had at least 1500 books that were not going to fit in our new little house.

My youngest granddaughter, Lauren, called it dumpomatic. I would load my Malibu’s trunk with books and stuff plus a step ladder. I would drive a couple of blocks to Hudson Street where several houses were either being demolished or a new one was being built. In all cases there was a huge metal dumpster parked in front. I would flick the books into it or with heavier items I would use my stepladder. I swore I would never buy books again.

I have kept true to that vow. The exception are any interesting books for $0.50 that I sometimes find in my nearby Kerrisdale branch of the Vancouver Public Library.

But Spanish books. Spanish books!

In our recent trip to Mérida our plane went as far as Mexico City where we had to wait a few hours for our connection to Mérida. I immediately went to the airport bookstore. There I found one of my favourite authors. He is Leonardo Padura (formerly Leonardo Padura Fuentes). His protagonist is Mario Conde, an ex police officer and private dick in contemporary Havana.

The book, La Trasparencia del Tiempo came with a problem. I have managed to read the first page which has a killer description of Conde looking at his calendar pinned to the wall that is awash with the morning tropical light. It is poetry. I have been rendered flabbergasted.

Part of the reason is that many words in Spanish are poems in themselves. Consider rendija:

rendija.

De re- y hendija.

1. f. Hendidura, raja o abertura larga y estrecha que se produce en cualquier cuerpo sólido, como una pared, una tabla, etc., y lo atraviesa de parte a parte.

2. f. Espacio, generalmente estrecho, entre dos tableros o planchas metálicas que se articulan el uno con el otro, como una caja con su tapadera, la hoja de la ventana o de la puerta con el marco, etc.

3. f. Hendidura por donde puede entrar la luz y el aire exteriores. U. t. en sent. fig.

Real Academia Española © Todos los derechos reservados

The beautiful word rendija translates to slit. In Spanish hendija (with the re) can mean the small space when two bodies get very close to each other. You might be a voyeur and use a rendija (perhaps through the slat of a Venetian blind to spy on someone). The word rendija not only seems to be a slit but it is also about the quality of light that might filter through it.

I suspect that part of the music of the word is that it sounds árabe and many words in Spanish originated during the years that the “moros” occupied Spain. The loveliest of all is ojalá (I hope) which really means if Allah wills. And consider tthat the lowly artichoke in Spanish (from Spain) is alcaucil.

I had been told and taught, over and over, by my grandmother (I really never did find out if she had been born in Valencia, or in Manila) that her husband, my grandfather, Don Tirso de Irureta Goyena spoke and wrote Spanish beautifully. In fact he was one of the few who before he died in 1918 had been made a member of the lofty Real Academia Española.

In the beginning of that 20^th century the Philippines had been liberated from the yoke of the Spanish. This was replaced by the American version. My grandfather was a trial lawyer. He spoke very good English. He would hold court and correct the other side’s council’s English. But Don Tirso insisted in doing his part in Spanish and had a translator (whom he also corrected). The judge would say something like, “You don’t need a translator. Why are you playing this game?”

The game my grandfather played and lost was to keep Spanish as the official language.

Many words from Spanish remain. One silia (a misspelling of silla or chair) was removed from usage during the nationalastic 80s. The word salon puit replaced it. It means “that which you put your bum on.”

Here is a poem by my grandfather from the book Breve Antología de La Poesía Filipina (Poetas de Habla Española)

Selección y notas por Pablo Laslo y Raúl Guerrero Montemayor – Estudio preliminar del ingeniero Luís G. Miranda

Mi Guitarra

Yo no sé manejar esa caja

De madera, con cuerdas de acero,

que llaman guitarra:

tengo otra que entona cantares,

es un pecho que sufre su caja,

y tiene por cuerdas

las fibras de un alma…

No te extrañe por eso, morena,

que aunque yo no tenga tu bella guitarra,

la mía, sin lazos, ni cuerdas, ni claver,

ni sonora caja,

también con mi pluma te cante dolores,

y penas y dudas y goces y ansias!

I would not dare translate my grandfather's poem which is about his inability to play a guitar. He points out the he himself has a sounding box and the steel strings are the fibres of his soul. He then tells the guitar (la morena) that she should not find it strange that with his pen he can sing "dolores" (pain), doubts and pleasures and yearing.

But I believe that his morena (sometimes an endearing word which means dark you say to a woman you love) and that he can sing to her dolores, this poem is really a love song to his Dolores (María de los Dolores Reyes de Irureta Goyena). 

My first cousin Robin Humphrey has weighed in on the poem that I did not translate. I read the poem to my two daughters telling them that this was a love poem to their great-grandmother. Cousin Robin has been more direct: