A Poem and a Backstory
When the duende awakens,
Sends a signal from deep within,
From faraway.
When the duende arises,
Sings a melody– crisp and clear,
From high above.
When the duende alights,
Swells from within the heart
From belly-afire, aroused.
He makes a call that can be heard.
He sings a song that can be sung.
He dances a jig that can be danced.
Around the circle of the center,
Life springs anew.
And, the heavens all around…
Resound.
The word duende/duwende entered my life when I was a child. My mom cautioned me from climbing a tree in our garden because, she said, a nuno sa punso (a grandfatherly spirit living within old trees) lived there, could wake up and get angry at me. But, she let me climb up another tree where she said a duende lived.
Many years later, reading his poetry and works, I encountered the duende of Federico Garcia Lorca and of the Spanish people. This “mysterious power which everyone senses and no philosopher explains is, in sum, the spirit of the earth, the same duende that scorched the heart of Nietzsche, who searched in vain for its external forms on the Rialto Bridge and in the music of Bizet, without knowing that the duende he was pursuing had leaped straight from the Greek mysteries to the dancers of Cadiz or the beheaded, Dionysian scream of Silverio’s siguiriya.” Goosebumps!… as his descriptions seemed to fit some memories and the word/image of duende captured moments of experience that the word/image of duende captured.
Those vivid moments of singing and playing the guitar to an audience that was somehow mesmerizing.
Of jamming with musicians under the moonlight sky on the beach.
Or standing in a landscape that spoke with a presence, felt otherworldly.
Waking up one morning, when everything was still, silent and sweet…
Sitting in a concert amidst a centuries-old church, the guitar concierto piercing right through the skin.
A meeting with a man whose force and joy radiates.
These had much duende.
And so, I was inspired to synthesize those deep feelings in a poem.
