An Artist For Our Departing Century

The doctor’s long green cigar was powerful stuff

and, seeing the child go blue, he blew out a puff,

the first stinking breath the boy would remember later,

twisting their heads and wrenching their bosoms.  Mater

Madonna Concepcíon couldn’t care less, her dress

in shreds, her fingers digging in at his thighs,

and pointing her nose at the Minotaur in distress,

and with a mare’s last whinny accusing him of lies.

Then he never learned to read or write at school

and married his women carefully by size,

their willingness to play his painful games,

except the one never petrified into a mask,

who defied his gaze more than a sister,  the fool

and harlequin, the pink and blue, the task

of prostitutes, the dance of Guernica.

In the end, he carried a parasol—inflames

her face--and hardly noticed the athlete hurrying past.