El Mundo
On the third language, and what harmony sounds like before anyone translates it.
I'm writing this from 37,000 feet above the Atlantic Ocean.
Between two continents. Between two languages. Between the poem in my backpack and the home where I'll read it out loud, once I brush up on enough Spanish to try.
In my backpack, inside a paper sleeve, is a typewritten poem I can't read. At least not completely. It's in Spanish. It was written for me yesterday on a sidewalk in Madrid by a woman I'd never met. It's titled El Mundo. The World.
When was the last time you understood something you didn't have words for?
The essay that follows is a poem written on a Madrid sidewalk, a beggar and a typewriter poet, the three languages — the one we speak, the one we build, and the one that only emerges between present people — and what harmony sounds like before anyone translates it.