I've mentioned before that there is a section in the online news for Coatepec, Coatepecanos.com, called Poemario which contains, yes, poems. I wouldn't dare try to translate a poem from Spanish, but I am going to copy the Spanish version of one of the recent poems and give you a rough English prose version because it seems to me so very much a moving portrait of longing maybe in a Mexican way, maybe more universally.
Wine as Ritual
Nicolás del Hierro
The wine on the table was like a liturgy, almost a prayer, when during the meals it arrived at grandfather´s lips; especially in those large circles, those of the time of animal slaughtering or harvest, when all the family came together in celebration, in a dream of unity.
The bottle at his side, the special moment would arrive in which the cycle would begin as he passed it to his right. Slowly, it made its circuit, stopping at everyone except the children and finally returned to him, water for his thirst and his throat.
There never was fear or displeasure that the bottle passed from one mouth to another. We only made a gesture to hygiene: a person's own hand passed over the mouth of the bottl, when it came to him. How could one think of such fussy scruples when the most intimate horizon was the healthy circle around the table, the light of family reflected in the tools of the meal?
We were, all of us, a coming together, a tight knot, a circle where the wineskins of that world: love, dreams, and bitterness, the wineskins of that world swollen on the fields of the land which meant for us time and the natural and the yearned for, that (libal) kiss on the tender glass of a clean bottle which transmits from hand to hand its music in the fiesta of family, the harmonies in the chorus of a wholesome meal where the wine was an almost biblical rite performed by the hands of the grandfather.
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En español (you will notice my liberties. Alternative translations welcomed.)
El vino como ritual
Nicolás del Hierro
El vino era en la mesa una liturgia,
una casi oración, cuando a los labios
del abuelo llegaba en las comidas;
sobre todo en aquellos corros grandes,
los de matanza o recogidas, cuando,
celebración de toda la familia,
se armonizaba un sueño de unidad.
La botella a su lado, dispondría
el momento oportuno en que la rueda
habría de iniciarse. Comenzaba
con él, y la pasaba a su derecha.
Lenta, daba la vuelta y a él volvía,
excluyendo en la entrega a los pequeños,
agua para su sed y su garganta.
Nunca había temor ni desagrado
que de un labio a otro labio se pasara
la botella, tan solo con un gesto
de higiene, que la propia mano hacía
sobre la embocadura del cristal,
cuando llegaba el turno a cada quien.
¿Cómo pensar en semejante escrúpulo
cuando el más íntimo horizonte era
el sano corro en torno de la mesa,
luz familiar de las cucharas todas?
Era como un conjunto; éramos, todos,
un apretado núcleo, un círculo
donde el amor, el sueño y la amargura
combinaban los odres de aquel mundo
crecido en la llanura de la tierra
que simboliza el tiempo con el trago
natural y añorante, aquel beso
libal en la ternura cristalina
de una limpia botella que de mano
en mano transmitía su concierto
en la fiesta de tono familiar,
en el corro de una sana comida
donde el vino era un rito casi bíblico
administrado a manos del abuelo.