Dickinson or Smith

Come summer, most magazines and newspapers put together lists of recommended reading.

Holidays and leisure are supposed to encourage reading, something that remains to be proven, but remains an incontrovertible assumption.

And most of those lists include at least one book of poetry.

Several Anglo-Saxon publications recommend, for example, a book called

, a small anthology of poems by different authors that have virtue, they say, perhaps because of the special rhythm of breathing required its reading aloud, to calm, reassure the person who has the little book in his hands.

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Sixteen months, a quarter of a legislature

Relaxes a lot, by what is seen, the little poem by the British John Betjeman entitled 'The Last Laughter' (The last laugh).

It sounds like this:

“I made hay while the sun shone,

My work sold.

Now, if the harvest is over

And the world cold,

Give me the bonus of laughter

As I lose hold”.

(“I took advantage while I could / My work sold. / Now, if the harvest is over / and the world is cold, / give me the gratification of laughter / while I lose control”).

Or this little wonder from Emily Dickinson:

“Hope' is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul

And sings the tune without the words

And never stops – at all”.

(“Hope is that thing with feathers / that perches in the soul, / that sings its melody without words / and sings without stopping”).

These are highly advisable recommendations before returning to the cold, in every sense, that this winter heralds and to the uncertainty that surrounds not Spain, but Europe and the world.

Before, for example, remembering the old poem by the Englishwoman Stevie Smith, pure and magnificent black humor:

“Nobody heard him, the dead

Though he still lay lamenting:

I was much further away than they thought!

And he didn't say hello!

I was drowning!

Poor man, he loved to have fun

And now he's dead

Too cold for him, he had a cardiac arrest

They were saying

Oh no no no, it's always so cold

(the deceased continued to lament)

All my life I was too far

And he didn't say hello!

I was drowning!".

So the recommendation for the next 30 days on most reading lists is to forget the tongue-in-cheek Smith and indulge in the wonderful 'Hope'.

“And the sweetest in the gale is heard;

And sore must be the storm

That could afford the little bird

That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,

And on the strangest sea;

Yet, never, in extremity,

It asked a crumb of me”.

("Sweeter sounds in the gale / and atrocious must be the storm / that can bring down that little bird / that kept so many warm. / I have heard him in the coldest land / and in the strangest sea; / And never , in the inclemency, / has asked me for a crumb”).

The worst fight, said someone who is not very fashionable, Karl Marx, is the one that is not done, so at the return of summer and this peaceful intermission, the multitude of drawers that are now momentarily closed will be opened.

The most worrying is the economic one.

It is impossible to calculate the inflation curve without knowing how the war in Ukraine will evolve, and the sooner citizens realize that this is the case, no matter how far Spain feels from the battlefield, the better it will be, because the only thing that will be in the hands of these citizens is to decide who they want to face this situation at the head of the Government, and not who will be able to correct it.

Who do they want to manage the resources that exist and not who will be able to find new means, because they do not exist.

The common thread with which the different parties and political leaders start in September will be the same until the municipal and regional elections next May and, surely, until the general ones.

Some political leaders will remember Dickinson and others Smith.

Citizens will be faced with the same dilemma.

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