Mª Dolores Mulá

“Pajaritas de papel” (Paper Birds)

2012

Lateral Calle Sauce 2 izq.

Elche poet María Dolores Mulá produced this mural in 2012 portraying two paper birds symbolising the letters exchanged between Miguel Hernández and Josefina Manresa. The painting includes the verses: Write to me on earth, so that I can reply” from the Letter poem.

The pigeon-house of letters
launches impossible flights
from the rickety tables
where memory leans,
absence’s weight,
the heart, the silence.

I hear the wing-beat of letters
sailing towards their fate.

Wherever I go I meet
with women and with men
injured by absence,
worn away by time.

Letters, tales, letters:
postcards and dreams,
fragments of tenderness
hurled towards the sky,
sent from blood to blood
from longing to longing.

Although beneath the earth
my loving body may lie,
write to me on earth,
so that I can reply.