Before you brought me this maraca romance
and these crazy animals
and God’s horizon,

my heart was a Russian hovel
full of Yiddish dust.
I chewed on the stale blackbread dark,
sipping my sour borscht.

Oy vey, no levitation was allowed.
No spice and no oranges, no sunlit nakedness!
No Latin syncopation,
no monkeys, no silk!

So today, after running around in a ring,
dodging the bull for hours,
what a joy, coming home, to discover
that the soul of this summer night has turned Spanish!

Who cares that my brain tells a lie
when it says that these flowery scents on our path
are jasmine, oleander, myrrh?
Look, the stars are spangles glinting
up and down a flamenco dancer’s dress.
And those glowing clouds are odalisques
lolling on the velvet divan of the sky
like so many "Naked Majas,"
like you!

¡Ay! My body vibrates with a memory
of the night, just after we met,
when I took you to hear the Romeros—
Papa Celedonio, Pepe, Célin
and dashing baby brother Ángel.

In the silvery thunder from their guitars,
you embodied my Goyaesque dream,
with your barely-more-than-hands’-breadth waist,
your black lace bodice hugging
the sweet arabesque of your bosom,
and your long, full skirt of blood-red roses
sewn onto ravishing black!

¡Ay! I was only a novice
in the bullring of rampant desire.
And how your beauty gored me!
But even the fascistas of my thwarted past,
the guilts, the jealousies, the brutal self-doubts,
leapt to their feet as my heart beat out
¡Olé! ¡Olé! ¡Olé!

For there, by my side, was the long-sought muchacha
of my cante jondo fantasía.

And now, as I climb this walk,
the castanets click faster and faster inside me.
El Brujo Amor is laughing like mad, both loco and sane!
Already, I feel myself buried
in the Andalusian garden of your hair.
Looking down, the moon, your devoted duenna,
is wrapped in her dark mantilla.
Her skin is pock-marked and cold.
Yet she, too, is luminous with memory tonight.
She understands well, and approves with her silence,
my passionate Spanish intent.

Like a gypsy Mona Lisa, with a lingering wink,
she smiles

and lets me pass.

¡Olé!