She was there in the centre of a riot of reflection.
Just off the square, right at the mottled intersection
Of white walls, cobbled plaza and bell tower.
As the day’s heat faded
And the street stalls populated –
Tardes, the evening hour.
She framed me, but not like the everyday
Striations I knew how to bear, the way
She curved and waved around me
Seemed to deliver release
Of parts that didn’t please
To show, in each day’s sweated company.
The market came alive with swarming
Bodies gathering, scented breads warming
For hungry Moors and Christians.
Under the blue-tiled dome
A beckoning home
From perpetual peripheral kitchens.
I wandered and gorged my tastes
On the crafted art, there were no wastes
On that parsimonious hilltop.
Cloth or glass or wood or bead
Sating ornamental need
From gallery to babbling barbershop.
Which is where she should have been –
As some perruquier’s screen
Shiny bound, like Dylan’s boots, in Spanish leather
As he tried his skills so surely
Flame and blade and sweet patchouli
With a patina from fifty years of weather.
She held me and so I returned
Through year on year, though what I earned
Meant that I could never ever buy her.
In verity she showed me clear
How easily dreams disappear
As each one faded, I could not deny her.
If love is poetry, what I saw
Were half-formed verses, sometimes more
Sometimes another face was there beside.
But days of waterfalls and wine
Reina del noche, brief, divine
Though they distract, the truth could never hide.
Then one day, I returned, with the money in hand
I wriggled through alleys where street painters stand
But I sensed that the power that drew me had withered away
The mirror had gone
And as I looked on
There was nothing remaining for which I was willing to pay.
As I looked round the plaza the faces had changed
The echoing footsteps had been rearranged
I could no longer hear any message they struggled to say
In the evening heat
The tumble-down streets
Led me nowhere, but crumbled away.
The dreams that hung upon the stalls
The oils and bags and woven shawls
Were not my dreams, for they had not been caught
Translucent wraiths
With tissued faiths
They’d drifted like a lesson never taught.
They were there in my sight, but I didn’t grasp tight
And hold them, so they didn’t fade with the light
And they were carried off along life’s stream.
Now this shadow-self me
Waits for night’s reverie
And hopes to find the courage still to dream.
Far away from the bustle and bargaining cant
Discreetly displayed in a fine restaurant
Or somewhere that life’s small emissions can never quite smear her
Maybe she’s in some fine villa
Where the chorus-song of psylla
Tells the world there’s no reflection in the mirror.
Stephen Linstead
Picture Nick Victor
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