THE CELEBRANTS

  The police lieutenant said flatly that the gathering
  was cancelled. He had no reason why.
      --account of a celebration for the deceased poet
        Antonio Machado, February, 1966. Baeza, Spain.

The poet's cranium sits under a dust cloth,
his bronze eyes fixed on Baeza,
men and women ready for a day of homage in the park;
crowds of smiles swing up like morning bells.
The sun hangs heavy with occasion
as down come the orders from nowhere,
the festival alive with buses, horns,
a celebration that grows shrill then
starts to tilt,
bullhorn roaring
                        cancelled
                   disperse.
The roadway turns to a scramble,
La Guardia herding people, shoving with rifles;
constable's breath on the neck,
hot, sour, moving with
                             cancelled,
snorting basta.

             *
1939: earlier moves in the mountains.
Car rattling north,
dust-lengths ahead of Franco,
Machado riding shot-gun, soothes his old mother
bundled on his lap.
Long afternoon for this trousered Madonna
and child.

             *
In Baeza Machado's head is cast in bronze.
The constable takes a step back from the crowd.
He blows one, two, then lets his silver whistle fall
to a charge of swinging clubs and guns.
A woman nearby scribbles on paper,
"how glorious that man's pistol is to him.
He waves it as if he were fencing,
furious, and absolutely out of his mind."
                                                        Cancelled
                  Disperse.
Out of the question to ask questions,
these skulls knocked no harder than any in the past,
madness shaken out with the keepsake ease
of one, two, three.

First published in The New Orleans Review