In Toledo

You don't know what you're getting yourself in for,
suddenly it's 1586, winding labyrinthine streets,
little cobblestones (but it's hot and sunny!)
(some wind), everything's at an angle

"Let's go to El Greco's house" (down the stepped stone lane)
(like one time El Greco lived there and his friends used to think:
"Yeah, I'm going to drop in and see El Greco"
in the city built on the hill)

came down to the little park,
smoked some hash in the stone monument,
you just stare across the canyon to the old rich houses on the hills,
look down at the river, ruins of an ancient bridge,
white
          wild
                    geese      tiny down on the far bank

                    City in Nature

and if you lived there
and this was your normal view
and the fog comes
and the snow—
you'd become completely separated from the world,
time medieval Spanish

Monasterio de San Juan de los Reyes,
an orange tree in the courtyard Gothic stone,
but the Church of Santo Tomé much smaller,
but a giant El Greco masterpiece in the dim light,
a middle-aged Spanish lady looks from a bench and weeps,
round the outside, out the thin paths of Moors,
separate, lost

     an orange cat alone,
     eye gouged in fight,
     waiting for help in the dry clay

"In the time of the flying ants…"

In the time of the flying ants
a twilight streetlamp moulders pink,
pink as the clouds upon grey air,
pink as one's vulva in magazines,
soft as the smell of lily
in the eternal Connacht summer,
she is a great explosion of hair,
she is someone's tender moment in a life full of shock,
it is a fine music the rumble of wings,
she (that cat) is taut sleek muscle
a natural aesthetic of fur under a car,
I am an aesthete, I am high,
and I've got three realms of thought plus
one controls the mix in turntable scratch,
and I tell you now that
in the time of the winged snakes
I was a black ibis at mountain pass,
seen now in the veins of streets
with winged ants ellipsing the head,
fondly standing, yes, bring on the bats

 

Copyright © Michael S. Begnal, 2003