7

The Old Façade as Page

Tired leaf torn from dusty tome. Sedated words speak stubbornly the
lost symbols of dispensed geometries, stoically, inflexibly like stone.

Weathered parchment skewered by cables sagging with conversation weight;
others lashed like ink-lines strike wildly through the lyrics’ balanced page.

Carved stone garlands swing in timeless symmetry with history, while
the balcony flamboyantly cuts perforations through the well worn page.

But time prods on, continues, to lose silently the meaning, purpose
and the point, of elevated lineage and dignified descent.

. . . Internal and external forces have been at work upon it since the day of its inception; it has felt the subtle indentations of different occupiers; it has creaked and bowed under the pressures of economic crises, sighed and kicked back amid periods of relative prosperity – weathered the municipal peaks and troughs. It has stood on the Avenida Celso Garcia firm and resolute, frustratingly indifferent to the violence and the crime as well as the routine situations and random occurrences that have whirled around it for years and countless decades. It has revolved with the world through all the different seasons – endured days, weeks, months, of stifling summer heat and baking sun; braved the crazy lashings of tropical storms that go on for ever; the cold plateau nights of winter, and the optimistic scents of spring. And here it is today, watching, standing still, wise, silent, humble, with just a hint of knowing pride. It has absorbed these things like a sponge, but unlike a sponge, it cannot give them back; so its secrets remain, lingering in the delicate echoes of dark corners, roaming through the filigree cracks within its walls, yet teasingly evident, tangible even, in the stare of its weather-beaten countenance and the archaic scripted language of its form.