Poetry out in the streets (of Madrid) ...

I have always been taken by all sorts of initiatives, which try to "impart" knowledge in a creative way.

A few years ago a well known bakery in Lisbon started handing out the bread rolls in paper bags with poems printed on them and what initially sounded (and even looked) like a rather strange initiative ... was to soon get the approval of most of its customers.

I actually met  a few, who started collecting the "paperbag" poems, particularly because many of them were by unknown poets ...

During my recent stay in Madrid I realised that every Madrid subway carriage I got into had poems stuck on many of its walls, in an initiative called "Libros a la calle" (Books out in the streets).

Here is a translated extract of one of those - "El loco de la ria" by Juan Farias (1935).

"The fool had not learned how to read,

nor how to write,

but he could count up to ten; like many

others, he used his fingers as a calculator.

He could read the wind and the clouds,

the smell of the air and the ants'movements,

all of those things which are useful

not to leave the umbrella home,

because if one is prepared, one won't get wet."

One may or not be driven to read what comes next ...

I must confess I read it all there and then ... and still several times before I got off where I was supposed to.

May you like it as much as I did (... or maybe not) ...