Following our Chairs recent Poetic posting on your website, here`s a new feature for the coming months. Maybe you have a written, or particulary like a favourite poem, song lyric or even  a novel? If so, let us know and hopefully we  can share it here. Contact David Millar, Coordinator, History & Culture Group

For  September, think of  the GOC`s visit to  the Picos De Europa,  Pilgrimage long distance event to Santiago de Compostela - and of course all our members trolling off to Gran Canaria at the drop of an `app` So we end the  summer Holidays  with a  Spanish Poet - Federico García Lorna. A gay  playwright and poet in fiercely Catholic 1920`s Spain, he became part of the Surrealist movement but, as his plays challenging family relationships became widely known,  in  1936  he was executed by the fascists under Franco. He has no known grave.

The Guitar is one of his most popular poems, dealing with the sadness of unresolved love.

The weeping of the guitar
begins.
The goblets of dawn
are smashed.
The weeping of the guitar
begins.
Useless
to silence it.
Impossible
to silence it.
It weeps monotonously
as water weeps
as the wind weeps
over snowfields.
Impossible
to silence it.
It weeps for distant
things.
Hot southern sands
yearning for white camellias.
Weeps arrow without target
evening without morning
and the first dead bird
on the branch.
Oh, guitar!
Heart mortally wounded
by five swords.