In his double condition as a poet and a musician, Ramón Andrés is the crucible where the beauty of sound becomes the rhythm of vision and thought. His is the sound-ness of word, the soundness of feeling and art. Above all, he is a wise man who looks at the world with that sort of serenity not precluding a never-ending perplexity before its mistery. The universe —his poetry seems to say— can be contained in a word, can live in one verse, yet Reality lies always deep in the silence beyond .

Andrés is also a thinker, a translator, and an anthologist; he is the integral player of the sound-word-thought three-stringed lute of the human mind. His studies have the elegance of music, the elusiveness of intuition; and his erudition, though vast, is fluid and humble, never overwhelming or self-impossing. I would underline Historia del Suicidio en Occidente and the soon-to-be-published El Mundo en el Oído as his two most fundamental works, as well as the kind of intellectual research one does not frequently find in our shallow-minded, peripheral Iberia. As a translator, Andrés is precise, original, and bold enough to face challenges of the scale of Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood. Among his anthologies, no one interested in Spanish literature should let pass unread his Tiempo y Caída. Temas de la Poesía Barroca Española.

Allowing me to pay him this little yearly homage, Ramón Andrés honors this site with his presence .

Yo soy los elementos, la soledad del remo,
aquel viento nudoso que viene de los bosques,
aquel viento hecho hazaña
que envanece las velas para un descubrimiento
y vocea los nombres de cristal
que llevarán los aires conquistados.

Si arrecio en las planicies,
apagaré la luz con que me buscas.

Si ondeo en los arroyos,
no tendrá el cielo dónde desnudarse.

Si prendo en los viñedos,
dormirá el humo ebrio por los puentes.