la danse ii
Sun 11.24.19
What is that moment in one’s affairs when the critical door opens and there is an anxious moment standing before it? Among other things, evil waits behind it, truly it does, as it waits behind every door one opens. One gets to decide, How am I going to play this?
A man is hitchhiking. The devil picks him up
Where to? says the devil, who is in disguise
and looks like an old lady in a blue straw hat
who just happens to drive a Ferrari.
My father is sick, I must see him, says
the man, who’s never been is a Ferrari before.
This one is red, and very fast. The world
flies by. Apparently by accident, they zoom past
the father’s house. The man doesn’t speak.
After a few more blocks, the devil makes
a U-turn and drives him back. That was
a real treat, says the man. Inside, he finds
that two weeks have gone by. His father
is dead and buried. Everyone is disappointed.
Even the police have been out looking. What
can I say, says the man. I guess I let you down.
The phone rings. It’s his wife, who tells him,
Come home right away. The man hitchhikes home.
The devil picks him up in his bright red Ferrari.
By now the man is suspicious but as they
whiz by his house he doesn’t make a peep.
He leans back and feels the sun on his brow.
When the devil gets him home, two more weeks
have disappeared. His wife has moved out, lock
stock and barrel, and the house is empty except
for the telephone, which begins to ring. Now
it’s his mother who’s sick. I’ll be right over,
says the man. The Ferrari is waiting at the curb.
The man doesn’t hesitate. He hops inside.
He leans back. Once more the wind is in his hair.
He wallows in soft leather as in a warm bath.
By this time he knows the score, he knows the driver
isn’t an old lady, knows they will zoom
past his mother’s house, that he won’t protest.
He knows his mother will die, that he’ll miss
the funeral. He searches his soul for just
a whisper of guilt, but if it’s there, it’s been
drowned out by the purr of the big motor.
Am I really so weak? the man asks himself.
And he peers across that metaphorical ditch
to the person he would like to be,
but he can’t make the jump, bridge the gap.
Why can’t I fight off temptation? he asks.
He sees his future is as clear as a map
with all the bad times circled in red.
He knows that as crisis is piled on crisis
he will find the Ferrari waiting at the curb,
and that no matter how hard he tries to resist
he will succumb at last to the wish to feel
the wind riffle his hair, the touch of leather,
to be lulled by the gentle vibrations of the motor
as life slips by in a succession of short rides.
Then again there’s the bull’s approach to that critical door opening. How is he going to play this?
In the children’s story of Ferdinand the Bull,
the bull gets off. He sits down, won’t fight.
He manages to walk out of the ring without that
sharp poke of steel being shoved through
his back and deep into his heart. He returns
to the ranch and the sniffing of flowers.
But in real life, once the bull enters the ring,
then it is a certainty that he will leave ignominiously
dragged out by two mules while the attention of
the crowd rivets on the matador, who, if he’s good,
holds up an ear, taken from the bull, and struts
around the ring, since it is his business to strut
as it is the bull’s business to be dragged away.
. . . . .
It is the original eagerness of the bull which
takes one’s breath. Suddenly he is there, hurtling
at the barrier, searching for something soft and
human to flick over his shoulder, trying to hook
his horn smack into the glittering belly
of the matador foolish enough to be there.
But there is a moment after the initial teasing
When the bull realizes that ridding the ring
of these butterfly creatures is not what
the afternoon is about. Sometimes it comes with
the first wrench of his back when the matador
turns him too quickly. Sometimes it comes
when the picador is driving his lance into
the bull’s crest – the thick muscle between
the shoulder blades. Sometimes it comes when
the banderillos place their darts into that same
muscle, and the bull shakes himself, trying to
free himself of that bright light in his brain.
Or it may come even later, when the matador
is trying to turn the bull, again and again,
trying to wrench that same muscle which he uses
to hold up his head, to charge, to toss a horse.
It is the moment when the bull stops and almost thinks,
when the eagerness disappears and the bull
realizes these butterflies can cause him pain,
when he turns to find his querencia.
. . . . .
It sounds like care: querencia – and it means
affection or fondness, coming from querer,
to want or desire or love, but also to accept
a challenge, as in a game, but also it means
a place chosen by a man or animal – querencia –
the place one cares most about, where one is
most secure, it may be a spot near the gate
or the place where he was first hurt, or where
the sand is wet, or where there’s a little blood,
his querencia, even though it looks like any
other part of the ring, except this is the spot
the bull picks as his home, the place he will
defend and keep returning to, the place where
he again decides to fight and lift his head
despite the injured muscle, the place the matador
tries to keep him away from, where the bull,
sensing defeat, is most dangerous and stubborn.
. . . . .
The passage through adulthood is the journey
through the bravado, awareness, and resignation
which the bull duplicates in his fifteen minutes
in the ring. As for the querencia, we all have
a place where we feel safest, even if it is only
the idea of a place, maybe an idea by itself,
the place where all your being radiates from,
like an ideal of friendship or justice or perhaps
something simpler like the memory of a back porch
where we laughed a lot and how the setting sun
through the pine trees shone on the green chairs
flickered off the ice cubes in our glasses.
We all have some spot in our mind which we
go back to from our hospital bed, or fight with
husband or wife, or the wreckage of a life.
So the bull’s decision is only the degree
to which he decides to fight, since the outcome
is already clear, since the mules are already
harnessed to drag his body across the sand.
Will he behave bravely, and with dignity or
will he be fearful with his thick tongue lolling
from his mouth, and the blood making his black
coat shiny and smooth? And the audience, no matter
how much it admires the matador, watches the bull
and tries to catch a glimpse of its own future.
. . . . .
At the end each has a knowledge which is just
of inevitability, so the only true decision
is how to behave . . .
Stephen Dobyns’ poems, Short Rides and Querencia are from his chapbook, Cemetery Nights.