Happy Flamenco.(Poem)

 
HAPPY FLAMENCO 
 
   Don't tell me when to be happy. 
   I'm losing my mind. No loss, 
   you say, because outside 
   oranges ripen in the cold, 
   to make bitter marmalade. I pray 
   I'll be put back together in a larger way. 
 
   Now that you're with me, back from the dead 
   (I didn't turn round! I didn't 
   turn round!) my heart's 
   gone missing. It beats like the band 
   that meets to rehearse by Delicias Bridge 
   for fiesta or carnival. The bugles are loud 
   but, for all their practice, they're getting worse. 
   This is as well as my heart will ever be. 
 
   I thought you were gone. But the Guadalquivir 
   swells each day with a fifty-mile tide 
   that brought low galleons of New-World gold 
   to the quays, then didn't. This time round 
   I'll remember everything and lock it all 
   in the Toro de Oro of my inner eye. 
   My body's an empire importing only you. 
 
   I saw you drifting on the evening ebb 
   in a tiny dinghy, no engine, no oars, 
   under dark eucalyptus. I called 
   until the herons flew 
   but you didn't hear me. Don't you know  ...