A VOYAGE TO SPAIN
My boots are of leather.
I am a buccaneer.
My spirit is devoid of fear.
I sail on furious, thankless brine,
In dangerous, windy, wild weather.
I am always drunk with rum and wine.
I worship neither Poseidon nor Pan.
None but God do I adore.
I seek a woman and a stony shore.
I am glad that I was made a male, a man,
Masculine to my very core.
I ferry a schooner on the raging North Atlantic.
I manage the wheel, every tackle and mast.
I am destined for the verdant meadows of Spain.
My dreams are blissful, ethereal and fantastic.
I welcome the sound of the thunder blast,
The jagged lightning and the down pouring rain.
I possess secret ales
Within a silver flask.
I have met the rocky port,
And collapsed are all my sails.
I have roving as my only task.
(My mind is of a wandering sort.)
My ship is ruined, so be it- good.
I shall pick my teeth with its splintered wood,
And walk to a tavern near the town of Seville.
My state of affairs shall be one with the skies
Of a young señorita, of brown and dusky eyes.
In Andalusia all is tranquil.
I sit in the back, in a wooden booth
Of piney, stained mahogany.
Removing the bark
From my pirate’s tooth.
And with the rain-swept, morning lark
I hum an ancient sailor’s tune:
A vagabond’s joyful rhapsody.
(It is the jig of the moon,
It is the song of the sea.)
I leave the din
Of the rustic bar,
Finishing my frothy beer.
Unable to find an inn,
I travel south in a horse-drawn car.
And I stroll to a boundless, amber field,
To where ancient potions
Wistfully yield
Immaculate furrows, grassy oceans!
I sleep in the hay
In a farmhouse not far
From the moonlit pier,
By the sea, in the bay.
I awoke to a voice, youthful and dear:
¿"Querría usted que algún vino para comenzar su día"?
She was a peasant girl from the south,
Her name was Maria.
I kissed the slopes of her red, lovely mouth,
And I loved her in the umbrage,
In a corner of the stable.
(She was very young, of a tender age.)
Her legs were ravishing, smooth and fair,
And the curly tresses of her hair
Were scented, long and sable.
Her eyebrows were black,
And the fair, white lily of her soft, Latin back
Struck me with its flowery beauty.
Her fingertips and toes were of a glistening hue.
And her Spanish gaze of majesty
Was written in the dew.
We sipped from her carafe a heavenly brew
Of burgundy, flowing, mellifluous, chilled.
Her embrace
Was angelic, her bosom thrilled.
And her face
Was flushed with satiation.
I left her half-asleep, as she begged me to go.
I escaped her father’s certain blow
In a haze of elation,
Wandering to the boundings
Of the bounteous plain.
In my florid surroundings,
Wet with redolent rain,
I walked to the mountains,
To the whistling tune of a troubadour’s strain.
And I rested, rhyming quatrains
And other verse, some prose here and there,
In the wondrous winds of the Spanish air.
I ascended a down which gleamed like sand
In the bold, summer sun where towering and grand
Stood a vast, stony bastion,
Massive and Castilian.
Its king owned a province
Far to the north,
And in it was a princess
Whose name was Maria.
And the blade like gold
Came down,
Pouring forth
My blood on the scaffold
Like sunny sangria.
~ John Lars Zwerenz
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