Notes From Andalusia - a poem by Chris Zachariou

Lorca

In Alfacar
under the melancholy shade
of a cypress tree, the guns are resting.

The poet is dead.

Breathless in an empty coffin
he laments Ignacio.

At five in the afternoon

two twisted ravens
daughters of a lurid moon
took his soul away.

The crowds mourn the hero
but who will mourn the bard?

And will anyone give his poems shelter?

Cordoba will give his poems shelter

echo the Andalusian valleys.

The moon tires of Granada,
its crowds, their laments and tears
and now she sails for Cordoba.

She climbs to the sky devouring

all the weeping voices in her darkness.

From his empty grave, the bard begins to recite his poem.

        “Once so long ago, when
         lust was the same as love,

         a Gypsy woman
         took the devil for her lover.

         To them a girl was born;

         by fifteen, her wild black curls

         her playful lips and fledgling breasts

         were driving men insane.

         When I saw the unsullied child

         I was struck by madness.

         Seven nuns clasped their shrivelled hands

         and twelve obedient goblins found me guilty.

         But I was inflamed by her purity

         and the lust for sin she promised in her eyes.

         Now I'm back in Cordoba

         looking in her narrow-cobbled streets

         for the girl with the wild black curls.

        

         Gypsy rhythms flamenco on the river

         and there are five brothels

         and a church on every corner.

          Priests and whores and those asunder

          all walking hand in hand

          pay their dues to God and mammon.

                  'My good lady Dulcinea
                   leaning on the lamp post,

                   have you seen my girl

                   with the wild black curls?

                   She has slender limbs

                   and shy young breasts

                   and lips made for sinning.

                   'My esteemed hidalgo don Quijote,

                   for a doubloon, I can be that shy young girl

                   and for two, I can even be her younger sister.'

         and she grins me a toothless smile.

         I take her to a cheap hotel room.

         We heave, we pant and scream all night and day

         and the girl with the wild black curls, at last, is mine.
          

         But the time for a doubloon is almost up.

         Her mask comes off and the curls fall off.

         With a toothless grin, she takes the money

         then walks into the night looking for a lamp post.

         In the room next door, twice as cheap

         at twice the cost, the padre weeps.

                 'Forgive me Lord,
                  since she was a child

                  I watched her from the pulpit

                  and I sinned in thought
                  and when alone
                  I sinned and sinned in deed.'

         Aroused beyond all measure
         he brings the scourge down

         until drained of his pious lust        

         the padre collapses on his knees.

         Prostrated and spent
         on the faded marble floor
         with fresh and old stains
         he begs the Lord's forgiveness.”

                                                    THE END

                                        The curtain comes down.

                                          Thunderous applause.

The audience in an onanistic frenzy shouts for more.

But the guns under the melancholy shade
of the cypress tree are on the move again;

they kill the Don;

they kill the girl;

they kill the padre;
they kill the applauding audience.

Then they kill each other

and everyone in the town is dead.

All drowned in a putrid heap

of torn words and broken hopes.

The bard in his empty grave

with a Delphic smile

and a flourish of his pen

scribbles down the final line.

                                                   ' THE END'