Spanish Soil / Spanish Soul
(El corazón de España)

España - mesmeric matador!!
Swirl your cape of colours
swirl red and orange,
orange/red…
launch ambushes of colour from
bus stops, billboards, anywhere
down these drowsy Aussie streets.

Hail God-burnt country -
now burning in the heart
still blazing in the mind;
ecstatic envoy, hail:
fevered and fervoured,
fantastic, yet focused as
El Greco the great at Toledo.

Slumbering Aussie, me,
awake, alive at last
wandering, wondering
this time-allotted grace
glimpsing traces of your
spirit-south: Cordoba,
Pedro Abad and Montoro.

Sensing your soul
flagging but immortal yet -
fading/flaring into view,
battered yet bounding bull,
searing orange supernova,
white hot even, in afternoon sun -
sizzling synapses to Madrid…

Fitful pulse throb beneath
scar tissue carved and
flapping loose – like the
scorched remaining arm of the
Homeless’ Christ, glass-encased,
redeemed in 800-year-old
Civil War-sacked Church.

Holy Toledo!!
Roaming with Brazilian pilgrims
who’ve adopted me
lone Aussie wanderer:
quixotic quintessence.
Tilting towards insanely
immaculate heights

I walk the cobblestones
where once El Greco walked,
till lost and all alone once more
I wander crazed in heat,
plummeting above chasms
portraying water above which
wheel wordless birds -

Ecstatic mutes
like St Teresa, St John of the Cross -
creation’s highest flyers
touching down on castle walls
at mighty Ávila this very day -
Teresa’s gaze dissolving earthly chains
John’s heart-hand bearing eloquence…

Recalling living love
aboard a bus from Pedro Abad
where Pura my host will always fare me well
from ancient laneway far below -
eyes locking mine, hand held to heart
my own forever held alive and burning on
Spanish soil long as life persists.

Copyright © Paul Dobbyn Poetry