Federico Garcia Lona
CRUCIFIXION
The moon might rest, at last, on the whitest curve of a horse.
A beam of violet light that breaks from a wound
and blazons heaven with the dead child's instant of circumcision.
Blood fell on the mountains, and angels went in search of it,
but their chalices held only wind; blood spilled from their shoe-tops,
at last.
Lame dogs puffed at their pipes, and the smell of hot leather
was gray on the circling lips of those who vomit on street-corners.
A clamor of weeping arose from the arid night of the South,
for the moon burned the phallus of horses in candle-fire.
Virtuoso of purple, a tailor
held three holy virgins at bay
and showed them a skull's shape through the glass of the window:
three, circling a camel
white, in the suburbs, and weeping, whose way
led through the needle's implacable eye in the dawn.
Crucifix, thorn-point, and nail!
Thorn nailed on the bone till galaxies rust in the sun!
With none to look back, how the sky might uncover itself!
And a great voice spoke, and the pharisees said:
the milk is big in the dugs of the accursed cow.
A multitude bolted their doors
and the rain fell, resolute, drenching the heart, on the streets,
while evening clouded with woodcutters and barking dogs
and the darkened city died under the carpenter's hammer.
Surely the cow is accursed
with udders of bird-shot,
the pharisees said.
