Two lovers sheltered in a boat

Rosa Font Massot He hasn't been far off the mark, and has set out to write about desire. About sexual desire, urgent and vital, but also about the spiritual desire for creation, the desire to sing. And, furthermore, about the desire to forget our dying condition, to change our perspective, to contemplate ourselves from the outside, or from very high above, as suggested by the verses of Iorgos Seferis that head the last canto of this poem: "Under the sky, we are the fish and the trees." About the desire to understand life from its origin, without the mediation—and the extreme, intimate complication—of consciousness. It is, for all these reasons, an ambitious book: "The Poem of Desire "It aims to be the construction of a literary space where amorous desire is a fusion with the world and with all that we perceive and are."

The poem—because it is a single, unified poem—is structured in seven sections, as if it were the lyrical account of seven days in pursuit of poetry, all brief verses, made up of short lines, in which the author's distinctive style shines: the use of metaphorical and symbolic language is essential (such as synesthesia or antithesis, for example). "They breathe light," the lovers appear to us "a slope of flames," the sea suffers a fire and there are "roots of fire."

The setting, then, is the sea, and a boat, the space of intimacy for the two lovers—as she wrote. Joan Maragall—extended waters that move eternally. This is the allegorical place of the journey. With wise diction, the poet had warned us that "the vineyard is far away. / And the orchard. And the fig tree," because "the water calls to us. And the light." Far from the shore, "we are trees that take root in the water" (and the boat that shelters the lovers becomes a "furtive root"). The lofty purpose of desire contrasts with our insignificance: "we are the skin of a vining branch." Lover and beloved (the friend and beloved (from Lullian terminology) are often confused. Yes, Llull resonates in the author's verses, as does Vinyoli. Friend's Book (which, in turn, paid homage to the mystical verses of the brilliant Blessed).

In the chimera of wanting to express desire, the senses adopt diverse qualities, different from the usual ones: "What are your fingers? / A damp cloth / like the entrails that touch / an eye of moss." The estrangement that some of Rosa Font Massot's verses produce in us has to do with the combinatorial prodigy of poetry, with the overturning of empirical logic, which makes it possible, among other experiences, to raise the sea, for example. The poem's journey has evolved from the unease of the skin to the gravity of the spirit: "And now we live in song: words germinate like ears of corn from waves." And it ends, as we said, returning to the origin, just as this flavorful language with which the poem has been orchestrated goes back to the primordial sounds with which it began to take shape. Finally, the being with the impetuous heartbeat that we have heard stirring since the first song, and that has tasted "the immensity of the Word," now measures beauty: "I delve into you." What better fusion could we conceive!