"A Llullian Circle" [by Felix Singer]

A Llullian Circle

In Spain, they say, there is a river
that flows against the tendencies.
No one knows how it is done,
though speculation runs the gamut
from black magic to magnetic.
Up and over the Pyrenees,
it spills itself so that the shepherds
must hitch up their pantalones
or suffer tickling by gardas.

Somewhere, then, a counter-river
flows along with expectations,
pools about the lowest places:
formicating vortices.
The terminus where it runs dry --
in bygone times a temple shrine --
is nowadays a workmen's pub
that smells of beer and yellow cheese
and sundry corporal temptations.

Out the back they've dug a trough,
immaculated to St. Michael,
as the hand-writ signage says:
para su relevacion, muchachos,
renew the precipitation cycle!
Pesetas spinning on the bar
and wide palms raised to slap them down.
The drunken gamblers all have gathered
to see the auguries of Car:

 wings and bloody feathers scattered
by a hint of evening wind.
The old man thumbs a wrinkled dewclaw,
the divinator's only gew-gaw:
the rosary parsing the sage's time.
Now his lone nystagmic eye
(a brown egg boiling in a vat of lime),
unmoored from the world of things,
indicates an empty bird-cage:

"Gentlemen, that cockatiel will nibble its string
ere the coins are beaten flat."

-- Felix Singer