I think the pop-song quote is potent in this case because it is an internationally known song set to an old Russian tune
Janet

Rose -

Yes, Caravaggio might have painted ordinary people - but in an extraordinary, stylized manner that focused on the play of light and dark (chiaroscuro - and I hope I spelled that correctly), and the faces were often extraordinarily delicate and sensitive. My problems are that (a) he is so identified with Italy and the Renaissance in my mind that it seems the wrong reference for a poem on Barcelona, and (b) there is nothing "Spanish" about his painting, nothing that emulates the relative in-your-face boldness and simplicity that I think of with Spanish art. As I mentioned, it's a great depiction of a face, and a terrific rhyme - but not for a poem about Spain.

Concerning the Italy/Spain mix-up:

As I recall, Italy and Spain are a mere (dare I say) beautiful train ride apart with the French Riviera along the scenic route from Rome to Barcelona, so the poem was smooth as butter for me. Poems are always subjective to our personal experiences, of course.

I can't really see how the nationality of the painter is relevant. "Those were the days" is not a Spanish song, for that matter, but it would have been popular enough there.
As it happens Barcelona is a Catalan city, not a Spanish one, and the centre of the Catalan separatist movement.
Best regards,
David

As far as the paucity of back-story for the "we," I think that is an integral part of what makes this work so well as a travel poem. The eye of a traveler becomes hyper-sensitized in unfamiliar territory precisely because it is initially unable to attach full-story to those details of life that it plays passive witness to. It is one of the delightful conditions of traveling, and happens in respect to language as well: being in a place where one cannot understand the meaning of the words spoken frees one's senses from their normal obsession with orientation and allows a different kind of picture to emerge...if one can relax, without the guidebook, that is. This is the sort of patient picture painted here. And by leaving this "we" un-explicated, the reader is likewise put in the position of traveler: viewing the whole scene (including the poetic voice) with that light touch and tone that the poem has captured so well, skimming across the surface of the world--a world that is far vaster than any of the tiny dramas which we are from moment to moment entangled in and which distract us from quiet breadth with nagging depth. Not that the traveling eye/poet doesn't draw conclusions or fill in spaces, but it is all done with far less urgency and consequence than the normal plot-line approach usually engenders. This voice never entangles, it merely drifts through mood.

As Quincy points out, of course, set into the sequence from which it is selected, this poem's back-story is allowed to emerge in an unforced manner. But it's reticence in this regard is, I think, what earns it its prize in traveler's literature.

Nemo

Rose

Unlike Carol--arguably one of the most astute readers I have encountered--I do see one back story, at least. And unlike Michael--who is far more learned in these matters than I--I have no problem incorporating an image from Caraveggio into a poem about Barcelona. If we follow this logic is Italy the only place we may reference Italian art?

The story: The tawdry, jaded world the couple is looking into (the prostitutes, the ra ra skirts)is challenged by the purity and goodness of the saint-like girl. Michael's description of Caraveggio's signature flash of bright face in the darkness seems to work well here. There was a time when the couple's love was innocent, pure like that girl. Thus: "Those Were the Days." The atmosphere of regret created by the musicians, the prostitutes--their lives thrown away--can't snuff out the image of this pure girl. Her presence, her tenacious presence in this lurid scene, lulls N and N's partner, apparently, into thinking there is still hope for them, that the love they once shared as represented by the girl is still posssible; but this is only a musically-induced mood that slips over them like fog. Soon, it will dissipate. Notice that the word "doomed" is placed with such force beside the girl. The girl's purity can't survive in such a place; the couple's relationship won't survive, either.

I find it a superb piece. Goethe's Sehnsucht meets Rimbaud's gaudy.

Best
Lance Levens

Lance, I like the back story you found in the poem, and I like the flexibility that allows a reader to supply his own back story and interpretation, but I see nothing in the poem to suggest that the "we" is a couple or that they are travelers, as Nemo suggests. I have no problem at all with the image of a Spanish girl with the face of a Caravaggio saint, but the poignancy and nostalgia of this scene isn't specific to Barcelona. Except for the Placa Real and the title it could be anywhere, and the "we" could be anyone, traveler or resident, jaded prostitute or jaded client.

Carol

I'm not sure I can "prove" it's there, but, as I noted in my comment above, I also thought it was a traveling couple. I think it's just one of the possibilities the mind automatically and immediately tries out when reading this, and it seems "right" because it makes the poem as a whole make sense and therefore "must" be what we're dealing with or else why would the poet be saying these things?

I would agree with Michael here except this isn't really a poem about Spain. It's a poem about a mood. There are no giraffes in Spain either. I still remember a magic frosty morning in a small gallery in London's Bond street when Lara's Theme from "Zhivago" on an accordion wafted through an open window as I looked at an exhibition of Munch. The poem to me is about a bombardment of images that induce a state of mind.
Janet

I'm with Carol on this one. Were the author to turn this into a caudate sonnet, it might prove more satisfying.

I'm in the anti-"upon" camp and am also not too keen on the word "aglow". I also keep wanting to read "have become" instead of "became" in L13.

Finally, if the reader is not familiar with the lyrics of the song mentioned, then L14 might be a little mystifying.