Aranda

Under the bright sun a wedding dance,
etching another echo
upon the migratory landscape.

Here, the battleground
here, the defined mystery,
the certainty of illusion,
the death of the idealists.

A landscape of vines, castles sprout
upon occasional peaks, ghosts
upon borderlands of faith,
the inquistion of each;
reconquidista
and the torture of fascism,
Guernica
between windmills spinning
illusion.

Torquemada retains his power,
Habsburgian ghosts shimmer
under the shadow of the Stuka
and the distance of Franco
dictating terrors.

Beside the river Duerro we walked,
art stumbling out of trees,
offering glimpsed treasures,
symbols of pride
and independance,
echoes of freedom bought at a price
less passion would have found
too great:
dreams devoured by dust
maps painted in the bloodscape of differing
points of view.

But history may only judge
with imprecise phrases girding
the possibility of events
subjective, words define each view:
the black flag torn,
the red bloodied,
the dream remains upon pages where
years tumble through
horrors and form a landscape both
certain and dreamed.

But here we come in praise,
under the midnight moon we dance,
the Duerro flows
and music whispers the stars to flame,
until the morning.