Just the sound of an adz, hacking at a stump of cudgel,
thunked into somebody's shoulder-bones, as
an older man is pummeled by a stout, half-
trousered youth from La Coruña, a shepherd
with a Falangist cross-to-be, bashing guts
out here of a fellow cattle driver. Both are
slunk up to the hip in sheep shit, like
two of the seven that Cadmus jacked
right out of the dragon's earth to sow
the foundling Thebes, like so many Jacobin
inventions, sprung out of a jolted laboratory frog's
last quiver. Two cripples on their knees
in the quicksand isle Extremadura,
bludgeoning to pulp all that's left,
with benisons from a half-wit pilgrimage
of shipwrecked sots on their way
to St. James with nickel in their sacks.
Caldo gallego, rows of sulphur-colored yew,
guttersnipes crackling out laughter
across pockets of shale, hid in nettle
thickets or bat cliffs of the eucalyptus hills.
In the distance, a Dutch balloonist
tries to pass by Portugal without a stop
in Napoleon's Española, as Basque travelers
over the holy road make for whalers
in Cee, on the coast of Death, to put out
for the Phillippines or new United States.
Leek green grass silts the ashes of the sea,
so far inland now that saffire lakes
around Madrid ignite with every tepid breath.
As scud clouds rake the dark of sunset,
a scream is heard across the killing fields,
one single pore of light to aggravate the storm.