The Nomad Goes Out (poem to Domingo Rivero)

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria · Category: Literature · Subcategory: Literary fragments · Year: 1980-87 · Authors: Manuel Padorno

The poet Manuel Padorno included the poem Domingo Rivero in El animal perdido todavía (1980-1987) , a text that paid tribute to the author from Arucas whom he could not meet but undoubtedly admired.

«He opens the door of his house behind La Catedral, calle Gradas [now calle Felipe Massieu Falcón], 5. He goes out. He slowly tilts down the alley of San Marcial. Turns Obispo Codina, which crackles. Crosses the Puente de Piedra slowly. He stops. Looks ahead, upwards. What does he see? What does he look at? The falling stone? Where? Between incandescent lines? It is the crumbling of the mud wall under the blurry midday sun. The heat that relentlessly hammers with its possessive breath. The tower's glass glimmers. Domingo Rivero washes his eyes with his hands. The heat that knocks down, the calm wind that licks burning the edge, dislodges the stone from its base, moves it slightly, enough. The wave of fire licks dry. A cart passes. The muleteer softly lashes the flaming mule, with insults, preparing it, goading it to climb the slope of La Catedral with a long sustained pull. The sea shimmers in the background. Boiling pot, soda. The white ship floats diluted over the embers of the distance. Down the Guiniguada rolls deeply eager drought. Broken stones run crumbling, advancing melted. Down the Guiniguada ravine the cobbles burst from time to time. The palo bobo, the ash, trembles on the side.

Domingo Rivero motionless on the Puente de Piedra. He looks at the sea. He contemplates, with closed eyes, the sea of air, boiling. Branches of flames descend. Slowly piled embers. To the left, in La Plazuela, someone sits on a bench reading, asleep. Under the thick laurel foliage someone sleeps with the newspaper in hand, seated, incorruptible. Calle Muro boils. The window closed, hermetic. The pavement burns. The famished orange tree smokes. Domingo Rivero walks through the fire, dressed in black. With his dark hat. His silky old beard. Slowly. Through the smoke. He rounds Plaza Cairasco, eroded. On the other side, the Alameda de Colón moored, withdrawn. Very long sunken barge. Bartolomé Cairasco de Figueroa sees him coming, with appreciation. Culturally. Immutable stone that pours out friendly. And greets him, stretching out. Don Domingo Rivero silently handles the last air in the Canarian space, the Canarian stone. Domingo Rivero is a flame that flickers slowly, that handles the liquid burning stone between his fingers; the carved stone of his poetry. Unique.

He stops. Measures, with his eyes, the city of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. He measures its streets, literarily. Socially. And, intimidated, with irony, syllable by syllable, he stamps in the Gran Canaria municipal album his noble sentence:

I am the best poet of my street, although,

truthfully, my street is not very long. »

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