In rare occasions there are unique partnerships that are able to achieve incredible acts of faith. I said faith because you need all your power to successfully revive and old poetic form into this modern world where all spins around simplicity and time.

The “Glosa” is an early Renaissance form that was developed by poets of the Spanish court in the 14th and 15th centuries. In a “Glosa”, tribute is paid to another poet. The opening quatrain, called a cabeza, is by another poet, and each of their four lines are imbedded elsewhere in the “Glosa”.

The opening quatrain is followed by four stanzas, each of which is generally ten lines long, that elaborate or “glosses” on the cabeza chosen. Each ending line (10th line) of the four following stanzas is taken from the cabeza.

The usual rhyme scheme of a “Glosa” is final word rhyming of the 6th, 9th and the borrowed 10th lines.

Today I want to honour my Friends Elaine Stirling and Alain C. Dexter because they just had a dream, they pursued and they conquered successfully that dream and made it real in two excellent books. and to celebrate them both I wrote a poem that follows:

Thresholds

There were twelve in the Cenacle.
Some of them thinner-faced
others arguing among dreams
the apexes of the local vernacular

Without any remnant of oracle
their eyes sparkled as owners
of the twilight glow of reveries
embodied in the magic of a verse

There ended the gazebo of fancies,
of words written in the return
of what was a sea of ​​gibberish.

Forging on light and sweat the setting
of what far from a pleasant evening
turned the writress into her final frontier.

Umbrales

Había doce en el Cenáculo
algunos con rostros cenceños
otros discutiendo entre sueños
los ápices del lenguaje vernáculo

Sin ningún retazo de oráculo
sus ojos rutilaban como dueños
del brillo crepuscular de los ensueños
plasmados en la magia de un versículo

Allá terminó el mirador de fantasías,
de palabras escritas en el retorno
de lo que fue un mar de galimatías

Forjando con luz y sudor el entorno
de lo que lejos de ser una noche placentera
convirtió a la escritora en su ultima frontera.

Gavriel Navarro© 2013

You can find Elaine’s book by clicking in the image

You can find Alain’s book by clicking in the image

I also like to mention Greyhart Press and Tim Taylor for believing in Poetry and publishing this books because they will be one day world heritage!