Color

Rot Gelb Grün - Red Yellow Green 28,5 x 43,5 cm

THE SPANISH PEACOCK’S LAMENT

The absurdity of his beauty,

nature’s most flamboyant transvestite.

Probably an earlier version of himself

was a terrible dresser, a manic number-crunching    

nerd now paying with interest for the bad karma of  

bad taste, pointlessly gorgeous

like one of those would-be movie stars who

end up doing commercials, underwear or lingerie ads,

or low level sit-com work as the neighborhood knock-out,

brainless but nice, a running joke that chews gum. These days

the Spanish peacock has plenty of competition:

beneath its folkloric needlework every peasant blouse

is set to burst into a duet of chocolate colored nipples.

Unfortunately a bunch of chunky, sheepish Midwesterners

are insulting a silence of heat haze and wheat chaff, their

air-cooled bus—about the shape and color of Moby Dick,

                                                                     the whale, of course, not the book—

blocking a view of field workers making hay

while the Spanish Peacock lifts his skirts and lets loose  

with as haunting a cry of despair as ever heard in these parts. 

 Rodrigo - Concierto de Aranjuez

Guitar: John Williams

BBC Proms 2005