foot west-ward into your shadow—
Malángel, the badass angel with gangrene toes, beckons—
unready,
ascend the great Spanish plain,
your muscles/bones/mind grind one step
one step one step deeper into a gorgeous Death-
wedding of wild orchids, blue flax, blood poppies;
at Carrion de los Condes,
at Monasterio Santa Clara, he comes unbidden
in the scent of oranges from Sevilla,
in the hot shower that cannot wash la Rioja’s red earth from your skin,
in the glass of brandy and smoke and glances of old men
and you embrace him;
in the Meseta,
Malángel rattles plastic bags at 4 a.m.,
bowls stars down the Milky Way,
dances tangos;
in the Meseta,
no resolution, no answer,
just foot and knee and hip and click of stick;
still, the Meseta,
her cathedrals are barley,
her acolytes, black swallows dipping fields,
her angels are storks in towers clacking you on
until exhausted, spent,
the white lace of León’s spires come into sight.
3 comments:
This is so rich with images and sound! Love it! Especially the repetition used in the third and second-last stanzas. Not sure "rattles plastic bags" or the rest of this stanza is working for me -- seems like a departure from the rest of the rural imagery...
you know, I agree with you and have taken it out & put it back in, but finally kept it as an inside joke for anyone who has walked the camino... all the mornings woken up by people rattling plastic bags! grrrr
but it doesn't fit I agree... I wanted to make reference to the milky way because the camino follows it... but maybe that's not necessary
finally, I wanted Malangel to be a bit playful... originally he blows kisses! comments totally appreciated
There's so much to comment on here...
The beauty of lines like:
"gorgeous Death-
wedding of wild orchids, blue flax, blood poppies"
and
"in the glass of brandy and smoke and glances of old men"
and the sound work of "foot and knee and hip and click of stick."
but unlike Kerry, I like the plastic bags precisely because they make rural Spain less idealized-pastoral and more real-landscape.
But I am drawn to poems that play on the intersections of urban/rural and wild/natural, the ways in which we impact the spaces we inhabit/the ways we idealize these spaces, so...
A.
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