Marc Alan Di Martino

Azulejos 
   for Luca 

The cover of the book reads Visit Spain.
It features, predictably, a whirling bull 
skewered with lances, verging on collapse, 
surrounded by men in trajes de luces 
performing the great Spanish dance of death. 
My mother used to read me the story 
of Ferdinand, the strong yet placid bull
who more than anything wanted to laze 
beneath his favorite cork tree, undisturbed, 
inhaling a bouquet of summer flowers.
One day the businessmen came from Madrid 
to cart him off and coax him to see red 
but Ferdinand just lay down in the ring 
admiring the roses in the women’s hair —
refusing to fight, refusing to be a pawn.
In his refusal, I glimpsed my own rebellion. 
One day, I told myself, I’d visit Spain. 
But not the proud Spain of the toreros. 
Instead, the country I longed to see
was the playground of Picasso and Quixote, 
strange amalgam of Phoenecian, Roman, 
Arab and Jew, its sapphire coastline 
sparkling differently in each season
with changing light. Here are Dalí, Buñuel, 
García Lorca — all of them crushed in 
among the artful crowd at Pamplona 
dodging the horns as brilliant azulejos 
scribble their abstract language on the eyes. 

Marc Alan Di Martino’s books include Day Lasts Forever: Selected Poems of Mario dell’Arco (World Poetry, 2024 – translator), Love Poem with Pomegranate (Ghost City, 2023), Still Life with City (Pski’s Porch, 2022) and Unburial (Kelsay, 2019). His poems and translations appear in Rattle, iamb, Palette Poetry and many other journals and anthologies. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Currently a reader for Baltimore Review, he lives in Italy.