The Crooked Man of Chinchón
The surprise of the Plaza Mayor,
a perfect circle, cupped by latticed
balconies, with sand underfoot
and a wrought iron lamp-post
at the bull’s-eye. Tiered seats
are garlanded in red and yellow
and in summer, amateur matadors
taunt young bulls in the arena.
All day I sleep, till flagstones cool
and I can take my seat at the bar
beneath the wooden boxes, wait
for the old man’s traversal.
Starched and pleated, but crooked,
he leans heavily on his stick as he creaks
across the empty circus each night at nine.
He’s thin as an eyelash in the dust,
thin as the minute hand on the clock
of the bell-tower, and as he moves
slowly along the diagonal, all my dead
move into formation behind him:
my thin father – bent over a stick, too –
my mother with her one breast,
eleven aunts and uncles, countless
cousins. With them troop the dead
yet to come, their names refusing
to be written in the sand. And we
are there too, you and I, in the white
bull-ring, each hot, empty evening of July
as the crooked man paddles in a pool
of dusty shadows, as the spider-leg
clock-hands hit nine, as the bell-notes
fall into the wooden bowl of the plaza.
It’s not hard to imagine black horses
in procession, festooned with pompoms,
and women in black lace mantillas,
hiding their faces behind fans.