Fredy

Volverán las oscuras golondrinas

en tu balcón sus nidos a colgar,

y otra vez con el ala a sus cristales

jugando llamarán.

·

Pero aquellas que el vuelo refrenaban

tu hermosura y mi dicha a contemplar,

aquellas que aprendieron nuestros nombres...

ésas... ¡no volverán!

·

Volverán las tupidas madreselvas

de tu jardín las tapias a escalar,

y otra vez a la tarde aún más hermosas

sus flores se abrirán.

·

Pero aquellas cuajadas de rocío

cuyas gotas mirábamos temblar

y caer como lágrimas del día...

ésas... ¡no volverán!

·

Volverán del amor en tus oídos

las palabras ardientes a sonar;

tu corazón de su profundo sueño

tal vez despertará.

·

Pero mudo y absorto y de rodillas,

como se adora a Dios ante su altar,

como yo te he querido..., desengáñate,

nadie así te amará.

For those readers who do not know Spanish or know who Bécquer was or who really don’t like/don’t understand poetry, you should feel free to ignore the poem at the beginning of this story. Nobody needs to know the verses or even like them, but a lot of people have been happy to read them. Perhaps it’s time to know why.

*****

Fredy wasn’t stupid. He knew some Spanish and had decided to take the third year literature class so he could satisfy the stupid Humanities requirement. It was really a dumb thing to do, make a fellow study roses are red violets are blue when he’s interested in other things, like tossing a football around. Rhymes weren’t going to improve his stats as a running back which, no bragging intended, were pretty darn good.

Fredy was a third year player on the university football team. He wasn’t from the northeast but had ended up there because he’d been offered an athletic scholarship. He figured he’d major in something like kinesics or whatever they called it. Physical therapy for athletes who were still active in their sports. He had always thought his life would take him in that direction because, while not especially tall, he had a powerhouse body, strong, wide, sinewy. Different from the rest of his family.

In practice, poem lines kept coming to mind. They distracted him from the important memorization for making him be an excellent player. He needed to excel at football. He was driven to succeed. It was essential to practice, watch the ball, follow a healthy diet.

Passes from the quarterback, one snap after another. Returns by Fredy, one yard, ten, twenty. Tackles that hurt, but drove him forward to the next pass and the next jagged run up the field, sometimes to score.

Homework that night and the next night, hard to think about books or stanzas when other more important things were on the line.

Today he had spent hours working out and was very concerned about the big game on Saturday but also about Spanish class assignment. Odd. Talking about poetry at 9:00 Friday morning was hardly on his radar, let alone a priority. But why was a funny-shaped leather-covered ball a priority? He thought he knew the answer to that question. When he was growing up, and school was not important, success on the court or field resulted in bravos and applause. He hadn’t wanted anything more. Nobody else had, either.

And so Fredy spent Thursday evening memorizing plays, hoping he wouldn’t forget any steps or lines - lines? - while his team was executing them. He even studied the verses - verses? - his quarterback would be calling out. The QB knew his lines very well. He had repeated them over and over, like the lyrics to a song or stanzas in a poem. They needed to be perfect, exact.

Fredy thought about repetition and its importance. He had learned that in sports practice was the most important thing. Practice until it hurt, but more importantly, until every move was natural, instinctive, automatic. No time for thinking, just act, set up the plays, and pass the ball off to a player who knew how to run with it. That could be done via a hand-off or by launching the pigskin through the air. 

The poem. The dark-feathered swallows that might or might not return in the spring? The football that a player might or might not return in his team’s effort to reach the goal line of the opponent? That odd shape flying through the air?

Volverán las oscuras golondrinas

en tu balcón sus nidos a colgar,

y otra vez con el ala a sus cristales

jugando llamarán.

 Would the swallows make their nests on the balcony again? Would his team be able to reach the end line or the goal posts of the other team? Why had the poet used the verb jugando, playing, as if there were a team of swallows? What sport did they play? The verb volverán, they will return, also sounded like something from a match where a ball was kicked and the other team had to see how far they could return it. A yard at a time, or ten, even fifty. The ball flew. Like the birds. 

This was not right, Fredy thought, as his gaze slid from the play diagrams to the page in that foreign language that he knew he knew but not perfectly. 

Pero aquellas que el vuelo refrenaban

tu hermosura y mi dicha a contemplar,

aquellas que aprendieron nuestros nombres...

ésas... ¡no volverán!

Some of the swallows stopped to observe the people watching their flight, that’s what the second stanza was about. Those birds were the ones who could never return - ésas... ¡no volverán! - and Fredy had no idea what that meant. He understood football. Maybe the swallows in this case were like the players who had once been stars but who were no longer active. They might have been great, but it’s useless to think about past performances. Living in the past would not help a team win a championship if the current players weren’t as good. The former players, like the swallows, would never return, just like the birds who had been there when the lovers had first fallen in love. All of that was never going to return. How could a team be successful, then? 

Volverán las tupidas madreselvas

de tu jardín las tapias a escalar,

The honeysuckle will creep upward again? The dew-misted flowers will blossom once more? Fredy wasn’t sure if he had ever seen honeysuckle, but he knew it meant little out on the field when he was playing. The only scent he knew then was sweat or mud or bruised grass, but yes, those smells always returned. They were part of the game, they were part of what drew him to it. Except somewhere, off in the distance, on a far-away field that was not part of a college campus, there was a memory of a sweet fragrance drifting about near the field where he’d played as a boy. Maybe it had been honeysuckle, but he wasn’t certain.

Volverán del amor en tus oídos

las palabras ardientes a sonar;

He was beginning to feel sleepy after a long day of practice, a strenuous two-hour gym work-out, and homework for courses he wasn’t sure would be of any use in the future. Courses with poetry in Spanish from the nineteenth century were at the top of the uselessness list. The burning words of love will return; you will hear them once more.  Yes, the love of the sport, the cries and cheers of fans, the praise and hugs from teammates: those were words of love, most of the time. He loved the roar that went up from the small stadium when they scored, recovered a fumble, or returned a punt sixty yards. 

Everything must come to an end, though. A football game, even a championship match, ends. The moment of winning, of teamwork, of successful plays, would go in the record books and would be history. They could be savored, but not relived. 

como yo te he querido..., desengáñate,

nadie así te amará.

They couldn’t be relived, just as other things couldn’t. Like the voice of his father who back in El Salvador had watched his wife slip in among the trees and disappear with their three children. His father who had told his oldest son something similar to the poem: never doubt that I love you, nobody will ever love you more. His father, who might be back in El Salvador still, trying to escape the way his wife and children had. Hopefully he had been able to find enough food to eat. When the family had all been together, they had been starving. Try to escape the battlefield the country had become, a field without hope or employment, but with bullets flying like footballs all the time, in a game nobody was going to win: that had been their dream.

Fredy knew why he had chosen football. He also knew the good memories of the past could not be relived; they were gone for good. Still, every time he caught a pass or scored a touchdown, he heard his father’s voice in the Spanish of their village. He heard the words of love that men don’t always say but that had been repeated to him as a little boy. Nobody would ever love him that way again.

As he studied the game plays, Fredy knew he could not forget the bullets and the forest that had hidden him, his two sisters and his mother as they made their way to the border with the big river and crossed over. He also knew why he had signed up for a Spanish course and that he would go into the next class very capable of discussing Bécquer’s poem.