Spain

The god-leash leaves

Its lashes upon the broad bunched backs

Of sacrificial animals. The whippings stain

Even the muslin of the ways with bright red poppies

On this Sunday morning when the wedding

Would have been as full-blown as the cotton crop

In the hour

Before it's gathered from its scratchy little hulls

I can say "little"

Now as many times as I goddamn

Want, here in the hour of my forty years & four,

Here beneath the hardback hour of my death or

Past as it will really happen here,

And then the saltwater's salt and its "heal" and sting,

This ungodly lovely strapping

Thing, annulled. You will find me then,

A little damp, in

My small Madrid of shame.

LUCIE BROCK-BROIDO is the author of sum of two units previous collections of poetry, A craving appetite and The Master Letters. A third work Trouble in Mind, will be on the outside in January 2004. She is Director of metrical composition in the School of the Arts at Columbia University.

Copyright World rhyme Incorporated Jan/Feb 2004

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