Urus

We had forgotten ourselves
slipped under the spilled ice-melt in
a quarter of a million year old fug
neglecting the limes of desire for
the leather straps of domestication

it took a cave and a nightmare
to summon the bull from his hole, to
lure his red-ragged eyeballs to stare
hot-slobbered and fire-maddened right
back through our souls

sol y sombra, so Lorca said, our
Duende roasted alive in the fire song
of Al-Andalus, the sun of blood, sun
of death, the midnight sun of flayed flesh
on such a night as this

Urus, you are us
Taurus, the two of us
Your stink of tauromachy,
I leap you blind, Picasso as my picador,
no sword for the meritless

in Ronda’s ring on the razor of shade
on bloodied sand, theatrically
smoothed, I hurled my horns at your smile
and met you eye to eye
my minotauromachia


kh
12.9.06


Image: The Bull (1945) by Pablo Picasso.