I just posted Nicaragua by Darío to the Español page.   I always think of primitivista art when I read that short poem.   Darío mentions tigers in the poem, which is strange since there are none in Central America.  My Spanish vocab words for the day [from the poem] are zahareño  (“untameable, wild, unsociable, intractable”;  I always thought it meant “Saharan” and Darío was merely being exotic  but I was wrong) and peaña   (“pedestal”,  for a statue or art object). The part  about the idol reminds me of the idolos de la isla Zapatera but they are not on diamond pedestals so you will have to imagine your own.   Since the human heart is an idol-factory, that shouldn’t be too hard. My lovely wife is from Nicaragua, and I have sometimes placed her on a diamond pedestal—and so another connection to the poem.

On the reggae side of things, I linked my reggae poem to a Mikey Dread dub song only to find out he passed away on my birthday in 2008.  I had not known that.  I always loved his dub music and he seemed like such a positive Rastaman. The stuff he did with the Clash on Black Market Clash was great (Armagideon Time) but my favorite is Beyond WWIII.  I still have African Anthem –  on cassette!  Since he passed away 3 years ago you can see I am really on the cutting edge of Reggae news these days.  Well, we are already in eternity, so what’s  three years here or there, right?