Date: Wed, 20 Dec 1995 01:08:57 -0500
From: Jlor@aol.com
 
                        The reverie of Toledo
 
	Insects droning in sleepy mysticism in the Cricket Fields of
Toledo.  A weary traveller wanderds astonished along stones of a massive
fortress-castle; images slowly melted into the crucible of slowly passing
centuries, shimmering silver in wavering mirages at a distance. 
     Gusts of scorching wind hiss in rhythmic shock waves across lifeless
fields of thirsty yellow dryness, grass hopeless in the suffocating
desolation a hot summer day burning like fever, the soul of past glory
cast down, pining in cavernous hell of despair consumed with memories of
the Inquisition burning as fever.  Oh, my God! Why have I forsaken you? 
         A Painting of Julio Romero de Torres titled: "La chica piconera" 
(In the Museo de Bellas Artes) In a cool dark room in an ancient house of
Cordoba I first saw her. She was a meloncholy, sensual gypsy girl, a
copper-skinned dream maiden wearing white silken stockings: her black
silken hair tightly pulled back in the stylish fashion of the Gilded Age
of the 1920's. Torrential passion raged beneath the night of her sad,
impish black eyes.  She sat, posing, in her red and gold drawing room, her
lips offering a full kiss of red pomegranates. She was the scent of
blossoms speaking gently, softly riding romantic spirits that play on
night breezes; her playful beauty caressing, soothing, murmuring, hinting,
hiding, behind little, light nothings.  Her love like rainwater, gurgling
through Moorish acqueducts, incessantly calling in a whisper to my sandy
stone soul: distilling into me crystal dreams of her eternal beauty. She
has slipped away from my grasp, like an handful of splashing sunlight,
running between fingers that cannot hold onto it. I am in love this
picaresque gypsy girl dressed in white silken stockings pulled down to
just below her knees.  She was a perfect bronze maiden mingling the color
of olive oil and marble; now only another legacy of the Arabian nights,
but in me, memory of a fresh flower who once graced her native Cordoba! 
                        Departure 
	Outside her dwelling place a plaza square yellow with white light
frames a cobblestone courtyard with gray sculpted stone fountain, standing
alone, dry and forgotten, like an unused baptismal font, long ago
abandoned in the middle of a cathedral; still pleading to be filled,
again, with the quiescent grace of reflected moonlight, saying, "I, too,
am in love with a phantom-copper-gypsy girl...who wears white silken
stockings." Tender emotion hides in my guilty conscience of an austere
Benedictine monk.  I am alone, unloved, in the City of Courtly love!