Twenty years ago

Church in Aravaca

I stood outside;
a narrow street was swallowed in its shadows;
I watched a boy with many bags
seated on hard earthen steps
behind the rectory.

A sullen man stood
beneath a late-flowering tree
overgrowing the churchyard
against the fence, smoking.

In a tobaca I slowly ordered
postcards of the church
and a beligraphica.

Hoping for some stamps,
I was given a choice
of cigarette lighters from a
cardboard box.

I sat, on the park
bench, a  pew beneath
the spires, church swords clenched
with sunlight;
the tobacconist washed
the stones around my feet;
I wrote home,

-A sad boy with many bags waited
for the rectory doors to open.
A man, angry and thin, dark,
in flowering trees, the street of Aravaca, the closed Church,
he smoked away, the shadowy morning-