"Academias Pitman" (Poetry)

“Academias Pitman”


By Natalia Martínez


In the memory of the sign
the teaching still breathes,
Academias Pitman,
house of strokes and silences,
where speed became discipline
and discipline, art.

There, in the classrooms of Tucumán,
the pencil learned to listen
to the cadence of parliament,
to translate voices into geometries,
to preserve in each line
the urgency of what was spoken
and the calm of what was written.

Jean-Marie Jan, visionary,
simplified the system
so that the sign might be clear,
so that the word could
be memory and testimony.

And in the student,
shorthand became
craft and devotion,
code and prayer.

Today, when Martín recalls 
his years of training,
pencil shorthand 
intertwines with poetry:
because what was once method
is also breath,
and what was once academy
is now legacy.

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