Fuente Ovejuna
(In the late Middle Ages, the people
of the Spanish village of Fuente
Ovejuna rose up spontaneously and
killed their cruel overlord.)
No, there were no words.
Nobody seduced the villagers
with, "What Is To Be Done?"
No-one came with drums
to smite the heart
and pummel the Pueblo walls.
Best call it a communal twitch,
a spasm in the Pueblo soul.
Nothing seized us, entered into us.
More accurately, something went.
We seemed to have mislaid ourselves awhile.
Of the doers, who shall abide the deed?
None recalls the doing.
What can it be likened to?
Falling down a wellshaft?
Oppressive closeness,
voices that were all torque.
When we returned,
ugly sunlight had transformed The Thing
into a thing more prosaic.
The village was itself again.
But It had lost Its head.
People (we were plural once again)
were still as corpses.
Someone said, without conviction,
"Tyranny is dead".
A throat was cleared.
It didn't look like Tyranny.
It just looked uncomfortable
where it lay, contorted.
Some of them spat and shuffled off,
some just stood uneasily,
impressed at their own embarrassment.
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