Editor: This is technically fan fiction. The original “Platero y Yo” stories, a series of gentle early flash fiction stories about a man and his donkey riding through Andalusia, were written by Juan Ramón Jiménez. A Spanish poet who won the 1956 Nobel Prize for Literature, he is largely unknown in English translation. Hervé Suys is attempting to add a further Platero 120 stories, written in various languages including French, Dutch and English.
Let’s have a walk behind the yard of the house where those people from the big city came to live, mainly on sunny days.
I thought I was the only one who knew this path and its comforting loneliness. I used to play here as a young kid, Platero, long before you were born. Don Diego then lived here and was all alone with his immense grief. On numerous occasions, I grabbed black currants from his garden and ate from the overhanging sweet prunes but was never caught, although I know he must have seen me more than once.
Soon I won’t be doing any more rides on your fluffy back my friend.
The preparations for building a real road have started and from then on it will be far too dangerous here for old people like me and silver gray donkeys like yourself, Platero. So, let’s go, before it all becomes too concrete.
I thought I was the only one who knew this path and its comforting loneliness. I used to play here as a young kid, Platero, long before you were born. Don Diego then lived here and was all alone with his immense grief. On numerous occasions, I grabbed black currants from his garden and ate from the overhanging sweet prunes but was never caught, although I know he must have seen me more than once.
Soon I won’t be doing any more rides on your fluffy back my friend.
The preparations for building a real road have started and from then on it will be far too dangerous here for old people like me and silver gray donkeys like yourself, Platero. So, let’s go, before it all becomes too concrete.
